The mobile healthcare market will mushroom nearly 22 percent by the year 2014, a new market survey by global research firm RNCOS concludes.
That's even faster than last year's 17 percent growth, researchers find in the new report, "U.S. Healthcare IT Market Analysis." By the end of 2011, the mHealth segment should reach $2.1 billion.
"The buzz surrounding mobile healthcare has steadily grown during the past two years. There's no question that this area holds enormous potential in terms of improving patient care in the U.S.," the report's authors write.
Smartphones are the primary driver behind the market's growth, the report indicates, with device use set to more than double to 50 percent by the end of 2011. Those numbers are even greater among healthcare providers, with more than 72 percent of physicians using smartphones and health apps, researchers found. Add to that more than 20 percent of U.S. physicians using tablets--particularly iPads--and the market is poised to explode.
"There are over 10,000 applications related to mobile health of which around 40 percent are designed for healthcare professionals, which includes remote monitoring and healthcare management applications," the report states. "Even the Apple iTunes application store has about 6,000 mobile health applications."
Researchers expect mobile health to expand into virtually all areas of healthcare, including remote data collection and monitoring, patient education, diagnosis, treatment, and epidemic monitoring.
On a global front, the report also projects that mHealth growth will help expand the overall healthcare IT software market by more than 30 percent to $40 billion by 2014.
To learn more
- read InformationWeek's coverage
- check out MobileMarketingWatch's analysis
- look over RNCOS' press release
- purchase the report for yourself