This week, as mHealth + Telehealth World 2014 takes Boston by storm, no shortage of industry data and projections pertinent to healthcare are being reported, especially those that point toward growth markets.
And here’s one such growth market to be sure.
At the end of 2013, about 3.0 million patients worldwide were using home-medical monitoring devices remotely monitored by doctors.
According to the report on connected home-medical monitoring by analyst firm Berg Insight, the devices included CRM (cardiac-rhythm management), ECG (electrocardiography), glucose level monitors, and other devices. The report did not include personal-health trackers in the figures.
Looking ahead, the annual growth rate is predicted rate of 44.4 percent to ultimately reach 19.1 million patients. The trend, plotted to 2018, will also shift when more at-home connected medical monitoring devices, now in development, are released.
At the end of 2013, nearly two-thirds of all patients were using implantable CRM devices. The second and third largest groups consisted of sleep therapy and telehealth, with 0.34 million and 0.54 million connections respectively.
Other segments—including glucose level, ECG, medication adherence, blood pressure, home sleep, air flow tests, blood oxygen, and coagulation monitoring garnered less than 0.1 million connections each.
Interestingly, according to Berg Insight’s research, by 2018 the CRM segment will only account for 21 percent of all connections. While it will still be the largest segment, the use of connectivity is growing faster in other device segments than in CRM.
And cell connection is the method that’s on the move. While 70 percent of connected medical devices currently rely on PSTN (public switched telephone network) or LAN (local area network) for transmitting data today, cellular connectivity has become the most common technology in recently released devices.
Patients often use their own devices as health hubs in the BYOD (bring your own device) method, but it is more common for caregivers to provide a tablet or smartphone to a patient for proper monitoring.
According to Berg Insight, “there is a lack of interconnectivity at the moment, but mHealth connectivity platforms such as 2net Mobile from Qualcomm Life, and HealthKit from Apple, are emerging as promising solutions and can allow BYOD health hubs to become the favored alternative for several groups of patients such as diabetics and asthmatics.”
