Approximately three million patients are currently connected to their professional caregivers via devices that remotely monitor health data. By 2018, that figure is expected to increase nearly five-fold, to 19 million patients worldwide. The expansion of mobile health technology will also double its share of total revenues, from one fifth to 40 percent in the next four years. Part of the growth of mHealth may be attributable to the impact of cellular connectivity, which will overtake wired and Local Area Network (LAN) connections for the transmission of remotely collected patient data to care teams. The findings and predictions are shared in Berg Insight's mHealth and Home Monitoring report.

Health Management From A Distance

Remote medical monitoring allows doctors and other patient care professionals to track important details of a patient’s health, such as cardiac patterns and medication adherence. Incentives for doing so include cost control, demographics and technology development. At the moment, the major markets are heart rhythm management (two million people), sleep therapy for people with obstructive sleep apnea (.54 million people) and telehealth (.34 million people).

Cardiology is expected to dominate the market and double the number of patients who use remote monitoring in the next four years, driven by companies that sell implantable cardiac rhythm management (CRM) devices, such as Biotronik, Medtronic and St. Jude Medical. Telehealth will also continue to expand, according to the report, as more companies offer connected solutions. The report also projects that pharmaceutical companies will enter the telehealth market space.

Rising Revenue of Remote Patient Monitoring

With the growing number of patients who use remote monitoring in their medical care, revenue is expected to rise for companies that offer connected devices or services, or that coordinate care between patients and physicians. The Berg Insight report estimates that as of 2013, the total remote patient monitoring market was around €4.3 billion. By 2018, it will climb to €19.4 billion.

At the moment, a majority (76.7 percent) of the market consists of revenues from companies that manufacture connected medical devices, with mobile health revenues accounting for about 20 percent of the market share. mHealth is expected to double its presence to 40 percent as services such as Apple’s HealthKit, eDevice’s HealthGO and Orange’s Connected Health Center are used by more customers to collect data from devices, transmit them to caregivers and integrate them with care delivery platforms.

Health Hubs

A number of companies offer the centralisation of remotely monitored healthcare services through software solutions.  BePatient, Exco, Get Real Health, Healthy Circles, InTouch, Medixine and Verizon are a few examples of health hubs which support the coordination of care between patients and medical staff. Another area of growth potential is patients’ use of their own personal mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, as health hubs. This accounts for just one percent of patient monitoring connections, as of 2013, but could grow as people become more interested in and confident about their abilities to track their health data through tools such as FitBit.

References: Berg Insight,
Photo Credit: Google Images / Selling Success

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telemedicine, patient data, IT solutions, elderly patients, remote monitoring, patient care Approximately three million patients are currently connected to their professional caregivers via devices that remotely monitor health data. By 2018, that...