How is Internet of Things (IoT) Revolutionizing Healthcare?
As per a study by P&S Intelligence, the IoT healthcare market size valued $56.1 billion in 2017, from where it is predicted to ultimately reach $267.6 billion in the coming years at a CAGR of 30.2%.
The technology finds many applications in the medical and wellness sector, including clinical operations and workflow management, telemedicine, connected imaging, medication management, and inpatient monitoring. Among these, the heaviest utilization of IoT up till now has been in telemedicine, and the trend is set to continue in the near future. It allows patients and doctors to see and communicate from a distance via audio-visual equipment. Not only can they talk to each other, but the patient data can be also automatically transferred from medical devices straight to the healthcare provider.
This is of special benefit to patients who live in remote areas, far from a healthcare facility such as a clinic, nursing home, or a full-fledged hospital. IoT-enabled telemedicine saves time by enabling quick data exchange and money by doing away with frequent hospital visits. The elderly or those who are confined to a bed and are unable to travel are also prominent users of telemedicine. Defibrillators, insulin pumps, cardiac monitoring devices, continuous positive airway pressure machines, and oxygen tanks are the most prominent remote patient care devices to be equipped with IoT. As these provide swift medical care and improve patient outcomes, the demand for these devices is rising across the world.
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And, it is not just at the individual level that efforts are being made to modernize and digitize healthcare, but the governments are also doing their part. For instance, in June 2018, the U.K. government announced an investment of $52.8 million (GBP 40.0 million) over three years to enhance the IoT network of the country under its IoTUK program; among the various sectors to be covered under this program is healthcare. In the same vein, in 2016, Samsung publicized plans to invest $1.2 billion in the U.S., a large portion of which was for several IoT startups working in the agriculture, healthcare, home infrastructure, and manufacturing industries.
It is because of such initiatives that North America and Europe have been the two largest IoT healthcare market up till now. Additionally, the prevalence of chronic diseases in quite high in the U.S., with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that six in every 10 Americans have at least once chronic condition, while 4 in 10 have two or more. As such diseases require long-term monitoring and care, their increasing incidence would raise the demand for IoT-enabled healthcare services and devices. However, in future, Asia-Pacific is expected to witnesses a surging demand for such technologies owing to the growing geriatric population, increasing medical expenditure, and requirement for better patient care.
