Telehealth solutions provide healthcare services in the comfort of a patient’s home. Similarly, mHealth solutions and apps help patients in self-health management. Traditionally, patients were treated at hospitals, outpatient clinics, and physicians’ offices. The treatment of patients involved face-to-face contact with healthcare providers or exchange of information through conversations. Although this practice is still widespread in the healthcare industry, there have been significant technological advancements which are enabling patients and healthcare providers to interact online through different telecommunication tools.
The ability of telehealth solutions to improve accessibility of healthcare services in rural areas and curtail costs of hospital visits is one of the key factors driving growth in North America Healtcare IT market.
The telehealth solutions market is projected to grow at a CAGR of around 30% from 2015 to 2020. Factors such as rising geriatric population, increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, and dearth of physicians are driving the growth of the telehealth market. Moreover, the advent of video diagnostic consultation and wearable technologies are likely to create significant growth opportunities for players operating in the telehealth market. However, lack of telehealth standards and limited reimbursements are expected to restrain the growth of this market.
Mobile healthcare solutions comprise smartphone-connected medical devices (hardware) and paid healthcare applications (software). Currently, connected devices contribute a major share of 84.1% to the mobile healthcare market, although the download volume of healthcare applications is higher than the installed base of connected devices. Some of the major reasons behind the lower share of apps’ revenue in the mobile health solutions market are the dominance of free apps and low price of a majority of healthcare applications.
North America is the key market for telehealth and mHealth solutions, owing to the large adoption of smartphones and awareness regarding healthcare among people in this region.
