mHealth Technology Market Exploding

Driven largely by the growth in remote patient monitoring, the mobile health marketing is expanding rapidly, with the global market expected to reach $10.2 billion USD by 2018, according to Transparency Market Research.

According to TMR, the global mHealth market added up to just $1.3 billion in 2012, but should grow at a compound annual growth rate of 41.5 percent through 2018, with monitoring services contributing heavily to the total.

According to the researchers, the global mHealth market’s explosion is being driven by factors such as growing adoption of smartphones and the rising incidence of chronic diseases.  Also, the incredible growth in the availability of smartphone applications has created new channels for communication between patients and healthcare providers, a connection which further feeds the emergence of new applications.

According to TMR’s analysis, remote monitoring services currently make up the largest share of the global mHealth market, or about 63 percent, followed by diagnostic services and healthcare systems strengthening. And monitoring services will continue to be the fastest growing segment in global mHealth, given this technology’s ability to help ameliorate acute conditions such as coronary artery disease, hypertension, and congestive heart failure, the group notes.

These findings are underscored by related figures from Kalorama Information, which just released a report tagging the telemedicine patient monitoring market as having grown from $4.2 billion in 2007 to over $10 billion in 2012.

While they’re are clearly engaged in some forms of remote monitoring here and there, this approach is still at an early stage for most hospitals, as reimbursement for hospital-based remote monitoring is scant or non-existent in some cases, Kalorama notes.

However, the home healthcare and remote location health monitoring markets are already well-positioned to grow, and are poised to expand using wireless, handheld and ambulatory devices that replace older monitoring equipment, Kalorama researchers say.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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