With growing per capita healthcare expenditure both in developed and in advanced developing countries, the mobile healthcare (m-health) market is further projected to reach $58.8 billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 32.3% from 2013 to 2020. This is according to Allied Market Research’s report “mHealth Market (Devices, Applications, Services & Therapeutics) – Global Mobile Healthcare Industry Size, Analysis, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2012 – 2020.”
“Per capita expenditure on healthcare in developed economies is increasing at a faster rate than inflation and income levels, chiefly due to aging population and chronic diseases, which are lifestyle driven,” say Allied Market Research analysts James Franco and Yojana Jeevane, in a release.“However, there has not been corresponding improvement in the quality of healthcare services delivered, especially in developing regions. Additionally, developing economies are even struggling to provide healthcare access at every level to their people.”
Ubiquitous access of smart mobile devices globally has enabled diagnostic and monitoring devices to render seamless healthcare services. Thus, this market is expected to grow at a significant pace in the next 7 years. This projection is backed by the fact that, due to technological advancement, integration of wireless technology with the portable healthcare devices is feasible, increasing incidences of lifestyle diseases, cost and convenience factors, government initiatives, and affordability of smartphones.
However, weak reimbursement policies, lower adoption due to lack of accuracy and technology infancy, and uncertainty in government regulations are expected to hinder the growth rate. Moreover, untapped markets in developing economies provide a lot of growth opportunities due to increase in adoption of m-health services to control the spread of communicable as well as noncommunicable diseases. Such challenges can be very well taken up by adoption of m-health devices and services as they work irrespective of location and skilled professionals. The only mandatory requirement is the mobile access and a smartphone.
This report segments the global m-health market on the basis of devices, services, stakeholders, and therapeutic areas. The global m-health devices market is forecast to reach market value over $1.5 billion in 2013 from $0.8 billion in 2011. The contributory factors for this growth are high revenue generated from blood glucose meters, cardiac monitors, and BP monitors (in descending order). The services market is projected to grow over $6 billion by 2013 from 2011 market values of $4 billion mainly due to increase in revenues generated from monitoring and diagnostic services. In a stakeholders market study, mobile operators as well as device vendors will account for more than 75% of the overall market share by 2020.
The geography market assessment signifies that Europe along with North America will account for about 55% of the overall market revenue in 2013 and may reduce with growing demand in the Asia Pacific region. The study also offers an updated review on the present major market players such as manufacturers of mobile medical devices, and mobile network providers, which also includes description of relevant recent development activities.
