Telehealth News

Telehealth Future Continues to Look Bright

By Ryan Mcaskill

Various research points to the growing impact of mobile health and telemedicine strategies in the years ahead.

Earlier this week, we recapped several industry forecasts that show the growth potential of the mobile health landscape. Areas like patient monitoring, cloud computing and telehealth are poised for a significant increase increases over the next few years.

Recently, several other forecasts have been released that focus on the telemedicine market. All of which show an increase in usage in the years to come.

The first new report comes from Research and Markets. It examined the US and European Telehealth Markets from 2010 through 2020. It lays out that the goal of telehealth is prevent hospital readmissions, reduce in-office visits and better manage a patient’s health with chronic conditions.

“The main drivers of the telemedicine market include the environmental factor, staggering oil prices, ever-increasing globalization, hospital staff shortages and the shift towards more accountable health care,” the report reads. “Telemedicine helps to eliminate transportation costs, thus saving money and contributing to the preservation of the environment, and helps to contribute to heightened communication between physicians in different cities and even different countries.”

It adds that it also alleviates the need for staff to perform traditional monitoring and diagnosis procedures.

The second report comes from WinterGreen Research examined the telemedicine monitoring market place from 2012 through 2018. It determined that the telemedicine dedicated device and software market at $736 million in 2011. It is expected to reach as high as $2.5 billion by 2018. The report earlier this week expects a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.88 percent through 2019.

"Care delivery is enhanced by having clinicians be responsive to changes in patient condition that we know will lead to further patient deterioration if not treated immediately,” Susan Eustis, the lead author the the report said. “A core part of responsible healthcare delivery is to use technology for healthcare reform. There is a focus on how to deliver care differently using telemedicine. No matter who pays for it, the use of telemedicine is anticipated to reduce the overall costs of healthcare delivery. Innovation is key to achieving improvements."

WinterGreen Research also released a report that focused on push to talk telemedicine and mobile health convergence from 2013 through 2019. Essentially, these are devices that are used to record and transfer data  like smartphones and provide the ability to reach out directly to physicians for support.

“Telemedicine push to talk markets are evolving as smart phone devices find more uses during patient transport,” Eustis said. “During emergency transport, sensors can provide monitoring that has not previously been available.”

In 2012, the push to talk device and software markets totalled $214 million. That is projected to reach $4.4 billion by 2019. The mobile health market related to telehealth is also expected to increase from $1.4 billion in 2012 to $1.5 trillion by 2019. This will happen because of the estimated 8.5 billion smartphone and 5 billion tablets that will be in use by that time around the world.

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