With the healthcare environment around the world looking both increasingly valuable and increasingly tenuous as an aging global populace seeks healthcare answers, the need to save costs in the field is ever more pressing. But what many may not have expected was the sheer rate at which the market for wireless devices in healthcare will grow.
A recent report from ABI Research expects some very substantial growth in the wireless medical device market, and it expects those gains to hit very soon.
The ABI Research report pointed out that about 320,000 patients were currently being monitored via a wireless medical device of some sort. But the picture changes dramatically when it's revealed that ABI Research expects that number to reach 5.7 million by 2014. In just one year, ABI Research expects about 5.4 million new devices to come online, representing not only a staggering 770 percent annual growth rate, but also a total market measured just south of a billion – $950 million total.
There has certainly been quite a bit in the way of evidence to support such a concept. First, American Diversified Holdings Corporation (ADHC) has reportedly refocused its entire direction, working on a mobile application platform specifically designed to bring security to the mobile health (mHealth) market. The application platform in question is geared toward the iOS hardware suite – iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad – as well as several other mobile platforms like those of the Android line of devices.
It expects to show off new products related to this concept in the second quarter, which means we may be seeing them anywhere from about two weeks to three and a half months from now.
ADHC is also reportedly exploring remote health monitoring systems, personalized medicine applications, and electronic medical records as well.
What's driving these enormous potential growth figures? It actually appears to be the confluence of several normally dissimilar factors that are joining together to form what amounts to a “perfect storm.” First is the growth of the healthcare market as a whole. With an aging population around the world – the "Baby Boomers" in the United States, along with several other major economies whose populations are graying – the issue of healthcare is one that's constantly on the rise.
This is backed up by growth in the mobile apps markets as well – a recent Gartner report suggests further growth on this front, with total values expected to reach $58 billion in revenue in 2014 – as well as some impressive gains in the handheld device market for the healthcare sector. The healthcare sector, in fact, is actually expected to grow further as a handheld device market, with the total market hitting $8.8 billion in just 2010.
Combine these three, and it's a recipe for explosive growth in the wireless healthcare sector. As hospitals, doctors and other healthcare professionals look for ways to trim costs without breaking the enterprise itself, the use of technology to trim some of the fat out of the enterprise will likely prove very useful, and very welcome.
That's going to be part of the story behind an explosion of growth in the sector, and something to watch very closely in the coming months.
Edited by
Braden Becker
