U.S. patient monitoring market to rise above $4B by 2017

With home telehealth on the verge of a boom and more hospitals switching to wireless telemetry, the U.S. market for patient monitoring will hit $4 billion by 2017, a new report from iData Research says. Another report, from InMedica, sees the market for telehealth products in general growing by 55 percent annually for the next five years, thanks to more high-volume, big-dollar contracts from large health systems.

iData Research, a medical device research firm based in Vancouver, British Columbia, says that home telehealth--mainly "multi-parameter vital-sign devices" for low-acuity cases--will expand by 17 percent in 2010, while demand for wireless telemetry monitoring will experience "high double-digit" growth this year. 

"There has been a growing trend among U.S. hospitals to decrease acute and long-term care expenses. Patient turnover in hospitals is increasing, resulting in large growth of the home telehealth monitoring device market," iData CEO Dr. Kamran Zamanian says in a press release. "In addition, new wireless telemetry monitoring devices have allowed hospitals to downgrade patients from critical and acute care settings sooner, in a constant effort to reduce per-patient costs."

Both the iData and InMedica reports say Honeywell HomMed is a leader in home telehealth, but predict that competition is heating up, particularly from Bosch Healthcare, Philips Healthcare, Cardiocom. And some new players could add to the competition. According to InMedica analyst Neha Khandelwal, "more and more companies from outside the healthcare market are likely to get involved. The competitive landscape will look quite different in two or three years."

Of note, the recently formed joint venture between Intel and GE Healthcare should give a boost to both companies in home telehealth. "The combination of GE's healthcare expertise and Intel's experience in technology development could be a formidable force in the telehealth market going forward," Khandelwal says in a written statement.

For more information:
- read this Healthcare IT News story about the iData Research report
- take a look at this InformationWeek article about the InMedica study
- see this iData Research press release
- register to download the report from the iData website