We're going to Atlanta next week to cover HIMSS10. Our colleagues at FierceWireless--who also will be at HIMSS--got to go to the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, last week. (Not that we're jealous or anything).
What they found was that the global market opportunity for mobile health could be worth as much as $60 billion, according to consulting firm McKinsey & Company, but it's not clear right now how this immature market will develop. McKinsey presented results of a survey of 3,000 households in the U.S., India, China, South Africa and Brazil, in which the company gauged consumer interest in four potential products.
About 70 percent of respondents said they were interested in at least one m-health product, and a minority said they would be willing to pay for that product. In the U.S., 25 percent expressed a willingness to pay for m-health services, some as high as 20 times what they currently are charged for wireless airtime. In India, with its huge population and shortage of health professional, some people would be willing to pay up to 10 times their current wireless bill for a round-the-clock access to doctors, FierceWireless reports.
For additional details:
- take a look at this FierceWireless report from Barcelona