The mHealth market is set to swell to $58.8bn by the year 2020 – that is according a report by Research Beam, which said that a rise in mobile phone usage across developing markets has prompted the surge.
Besides this, the shift from hospitals to personal care systems is also helping to shape the prevalent mHealth landscape due to the technology’s flexibility and “consistent care” convenience.
The report states: “Medical gadgets are proficient at providing sufficient and precise recording of biomedical indicators [and] factors such as transportability, convenience, customisation and high efficiency in curing chronic diseases are used by mHealth market players to distinguish their products.”
However, the report suggested that North America is currently the top dog in the mHealth market, but it has predicted that Europe and Asia Pacific are likely to surpass North America to lead the market with a share of 28% during the forecast period.
It’s not all good news though, as higher healthcare costs have been predicted to slow the growth of this market, along with a lack of “quality” in mHealth services.
Further to this, the report also states that many developing countries are still struggling to provide some of the most basic healthcare services, let alone attempting to adapt to a more technology-fronted healthcare system.
Despite this, mobile operators are still keen to monetise on the mHealth market, with “many extending beyond providing pure connectivity services, towards end-to-end mHealth market offerings such as remote patients monitoring”, according to another report recently released by ReportsnReports,
That report also stated that mHealth can also come with a wealth of opportunities to pharma, “ranging from accelerated clinical trial innovation and medication adherence monitoring to securing the supply chain and combating counterfeit drugs”.
In addition it has predicted that digital therapeutics could one day rival mainstream pharmaceuticals in areas such as chronic disease care.
SNS Telecom and IT estimates a further growth of this market at a compound annual growth rate (CAGP) of approximately 30% over the next three years, despite potential issues related to regulation, patient acceptance and privacy concerns.
Other stakeholders which are set to benefit from mHealth include connected medical and wearable device manufactures, app developers, big data and analytics specialists and cloud computing giants, to name a few.
