The environment for the global mobile health (mHealth) market seems to have never been better. During the forecasted period of 2018 – 2023, there is an expected growth of more than 28.7%, according to the Orbis Research report, Global Mobile Health.
Investing in a smarter and more effective medical platform for communication and information sharing is taking health care deep into the future. In the digital world that we live in today, the process towards consistent mobility is a necessity in order to make on-the-go improvements to patient heath status.
Despite the mHealth market being very much in an ongoing developmental stage, it is projected to provide significant revenues in the future, with increasing awareness among people and favourable regulatory regulations specific to the quality and feasibility of the mobile-based medical devices.
Opportunities: Mobile Use on the Global Rise
In the healthcare community today, it would be quite the understatement to say that the mobile health world is advancing.
Not only is it advancing, but booming into a tech revolution. To begin, the use of mobile devices has been growing rapidly across all industries over the last decade, driven by the development of devices such as tablets, smartphones and even wear-ables. Approximately 80% of physicians use smartphones, a trend which has transformed clinical practices and led to the rapid growth of medical apps. Today, there is over 40,000 mHealth apps currently in use around the world and this number is expected to grow over the coming years.
By transforming the many aspects of clinical practice, mobile devices and apps provide many benefits for healthcare professionals. These, most significantly, include the increased access to point-of-care tools, shown to support better clinical decision-making and improved patient outcomes. Mobile health’s grasp on the patient care process will enable for better sharing among professionals, which will lead to quicker, research-based decision making; which is what treatment is all about.
Geographically speaking, North America continues to dominate the market as monitoring services are largely adopted in the region. In this, Europe and Asia-Pacific follow North America, in terms of market shares. The Asia-Pacific region is expected to witness the highest growth rate during the forecast period due to the increase in awareness of diseases among the people and high penetration of mobile platforms in the Asia-Pacific region.
Threats: Continued Security Issues
With every positive, there is an inevitable flip side. Rapid technological advancements in mHealth research generate both opportunities and challenges, including creating scalable systems capable of collecting unprecedented amounts of data and conducting interventions, while protecting the privacy and safety of research participants.
In 2015, more than 750 data breaches occurred. In this, the top seven of which opened over 193 million personal records to fraud and identity theft. Moreover, the top three breaches of data security were from the health care industry. In evidence, healthcare is important and keeping information on patient secure and confidential from the external world is quite vital to continuing the care process effectively.
In June 2016 alone, more than 11 million health care records were exposed because of cyber-attacks. The average cost to health care organizations per record breached is $355, compared to $158 per lost or stolen record in other industries; thus, these breaches not only take away vital patient info but also cause major harm financially. Damages can be costly. Security continues to be an important issue and needs to be heavily prioritized in order to effectively push safe communication forward in an authorized way.
Health care institutions, business associates, and health care technology purveyors all need to keep lines of communication constantly openly analytical in order to stay focused on evolving security for innovative solutions. As medical information breaches leave a lasting stain logistically and financially, it is best to take the most secure steps to create the most secure environment.
Until security and privacy are assured, the use of apps by physicians continues to be limited, thereby hindering the market growth. Additionally, the stringent regulatory policies for mhealth applications are expected to restrain the market growth.
As a whole, the state of Mobile Health is and will continue to grow in many ways over the next projected period. Through providing quicker and more effective communication in new markets, it’s a definite recipe for global success. Yes, there are threats to the big picture. Data breaching and information stealing are incidents that happen. However, seeing the continuous flow and development influencing the structure and components of mobile health technologies, there is much potential of addressing this problem.