J’son & Partners Consulting - Russian and Global mHealth Markets, Results of 2014
mHealth Market or Mobile Medicine is presented by services and products, which use mobile technologies (usually smartphones and tablets, but also specialized equipment, for example, sensors and medical instruments) in order to make the process of medical treatment and work with medical information easier, faster and cheaper.
Lately, the term “Telemedicine” is gaining popularity in Russia and CIS. In terms of this research, we distinguish between telemedicine and mHealth. Telemedicine includes the exchange of medical information with the help of modern communication ways, like remote medical consultancies, tele-education, online broadcasting of surgeries or councils. On the other hand, mHealth includes mobile technologies, which are being used in medicine in general, including mobile telemedicine.
Provider of medical services – isan institute (hospital, ER) or person (doctor, medical staff) providing medical services.
Consumer of medical services – is aparty, which pays for services of medical providers for a patient (government or insurance company).
Medical Records (Data) – personal patient’s data, regarding his state (chronic diseases, life indicators, used drugs etc).
Tracker (sensor) of activity or fitness tracker – wearable on the body device, which measures and calculates key activity indicators of users (number of steps, workloads, number of spent calories etc).
Platform for remote patient’s monitoring – main part of the system responsible for communication between the patient and its device, controlling health parameters and provider of medical services, which monitor its health.
Advantages
mHealth technologies allow to cut costs on healthcare. Patients, which use mHealth technologies, more rarely require visiting medical institutions, as they have more detailed picture about their health (for a long period of time) and in case they needed, they can consult specialists remotely. More to this, mHealth technologies allow doctors receive data about patients' health for a long period of time, it help them to make better decision about treatment scheme and decrease the level of failures in diagnosis process. Most market players understand this advantage and that is why we observe the increasing investments in mHealth sphere from insurance companies, government and medical services' suppliers. In accordance with forecasts, costs on mHealth in USA clinics will increase till 5.4 bln USD in 2015-2016 vs 2.9 bln USD in 2011. And the economy from decreasing number of visits to medical institutions by 2018 can reach 36 bln USD.
The use of mHealth technologies improve the quality of health care and make it more affordable to patients. Joint research of Economist Intelligence Unit and PWC shows that the key motive to use mHealth are:
Easier access to healthcare 46%
Decreasing costs on healthcare 43%
Increasing number of opportunities to control your own health 32%
Receiving medical information, which was inaccessible before 28%
Increase the quality of healthcare 25%
