The rising penetration of the internet and the growing usage of smartphones are fueling the digitization of healthcare operations and the development of digital solutions for patient care. In the developing nations, the emergence of affordable 3G and 4G networks is massively boosting the mobile penetration. As per the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), “as of December, 2016, China had 731 million internet users that represent the 53.2% of country’s population, with 95% of internet users being mobile users”.

Furthermore, as per the 2016 World Bank development indicators, 44 out of every 100 people in the world are internet users. This rapid rise in internet and smartphone usage is pushing up the requirement for mobile healthcare applications. Besides this, the increasing population in several countries and the rising prevalence of lifestyle diseases are also propelling the demand for mHealth solutions across the world. These apps help the medical practitioners provide home diagnostic solutions and personalized patient care.

Additionally, with the adoption of integrated mobile applications and connected medical devices, doctors are able to diagnose patients and prescribe them medications without requiring their physical presence. Another major factor fueling the rising popularity of mHealth is the increasing cost of healthcare in many countries around the world. The utilization of expensive modern technologies and medicines, rising prices of medical goods and services, and escalating administrative costs in healthcare settings are the main factors responsible for the soaring healthcare costs.

When offering is taken into consideration, the mHealth market is categorized into connected devices, mHealth apps, and services. Amongst these, the connected devices category recorded huge expansion in the market in the years gone by and this trend is likely to continue in the future as well. This will be because of the several advantages of connected devices such as their ability to provide remote monitoring of patients, patient care at low costs, improved patient outcomes, and real-time disease management.

Across the globe, the North American mHealth market was very lucrative in the last few years, as per the findings of P&S Intelligence, a market research company based in India. The surge of this market was because of the high healthcare spending, high incidence of lifestyle associated and chronic diseases, easier accessibility of consumers to connected medical devices, and the presence of a large geriatric population in the regional countries.

Hence, it can be said with confidence that the demand for mHealth will rise all over the world in the forthcoming years, primarily because of the rising prevalence of chronic diseases, increasing costs of healthcare, and the growing requirement for personalized and remote patient care.

Source: P&S Intelligence