Healing, surviving, or dying? – projecting the German future disease burden using a Markov illness-death model

BACKGROUND: In view of the upcoming demographic transition, there is still no clear evidence on how increasing life expectancy will affect future disease burden, especially regarding specific diseases. In our study, we project the future development of Germany’s ten most common non-infectious diseases (arthrosis, coronary heart disease, pulmonary, bronchial and tracheal cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cerebrovascular diseases, dementia, depression, diabetes, dorsal pain and heart failure) in a Markov illness-death model with recovery until 2060. METHODS: The disease-specific input data stem from a consistent data set of a major sickness fund covering about four million people, the demographic components from official population statistics. Using six different scenarios concerning an expansion and a compression of morbidity as well as increasing recovery and effective prevention, we can show the possible future range of disease burden and, by disentangling the effects, reveal the significant differences between the various diseases in interaction with the demographic components. RESULTS: Our results indicate that, although strongly age-related diseases like dementia or heart failure show the highest relative increase rates, diseases of the musculoskeletal system, such as dorsal pain and arthrosis, still will be responsible for the majority of the German population’s future disease burden in 2060, with about 25–27 and 13–15 million patients, respectively. Most importantly, for almost all considered diseases a significant increase in burden of disease can be expected even in case of a compression of morbidity. CONCLUSION: A massive case-load is emerging on the German health care system, which can only be alleviated by more effective prevention. Immediate action by policy makers and health care managers is needed, as otherwise the prevalence of widespread diseases will become unsustainable from a capacity point-of-view.