Technological innovations like telehealth software, patient engagement software and others demand research. Research and development spending in healthcare industry ranked below R&D spending in the computing and electronics industry in 2018. But, according to a new research from PricewaterhouseCoopers its projected to become the largest R&D spending sector by 2020.

PwC's latest Global Innovation 1000 study revealed these findings, which ranked the 1,000 largest publicly listed R&D spenders worldwide, including software, computing and electronics, healthcare, internet and auto.

Some findings of the study are as follows:

1,000 largest spenders have shelled out a record $782 billion towards R&D this year. This amounts to an increase of 11.4 percent over the last year.

For healthcare, R&D spending was $169.5 billion in 2018, up from $159 billion the previous year.

This study identified 88 companies as high-leverage innovators for 2017. It means that these companies have outperformed their industry financially for the previous five years. At the same time, they have spent less on R&D as a percentage of sales.

Twenty-three of those companies are in healthcare.

Healthcare is set to surpass the computing and electronics industry in R&D spending by 2020.