4.9 million patients worldwide are remotely monitored

Gothenburg, Sweden – December 7, 2015: The number of remotely monitored patients grew by 51 percent to 4.9 million in 2015 as the market entered a growth phase fuelled by rising market acceptance in several key verticals.

This number includes all patients enrolled in mHealth care programs in which connected medical devices are used as a part of the care regimen. Connected medical devices used for various forms of personal health tracking are not included in this figure. Berg Insight estimates that the number of remotely monitored patients will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48.9 percent to reach 36.1 million by 2020.

The two main applications are monitoring of patients with implantable cardiac rhythm management (CRM) devices and monitoring of patients with sleep therapy devices. These two verticals accounted for 81 percent of all connected home medical monitoring systems in 2015. Telehealth is the third largest segment with 0.41 million connections at the end of the year. All other device categories – including ECG, glucose level, medication adherence and others – stood for less than 0.2 million connections each at the end of the year. The sleep therapy segment accounted for the majority of the market growth in 2015. ResMed was especially successful with its new Air Solutions family of sleep therapy devices that includes a cellular M2M module as standard and is supported by a comprehensive range of health informatics software that enable healthcare organizations to provide better care more efficiently. ResMed surpassed Medtronic as the world’s largest provider of connected healthcare solutions for remote patient monitoring in 2015. Earlier in 2015, Medtronic became the first company in the world to surpass the milestone of 1.0 million remotely monitored patients.

Another landmark event in 2015 was that cellular connectivity surpassed PSTN and LAN as the most widely used connectivity technology for remote patient monitoring. The number of PSTN-connected devices has started to decline sharply as a result of the decline in PSTN subscriber bases and the forthcoming digitalization of PSTN networks, whereas the use of LAN and Wi-Fi connectivity for remote patient monitoring has remained very limited to date. “Cellular continues to be the only technology that can be used to reliably connect every patient with their healthcare providers”, says Lars Kurkinen, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. An emerging alternative is that patients use their own mobile devices as health hubs. The bring your own device (BYOD) model can in theory be very cost-efficient as no dedicated hardware or subscriptions are needed, but accounted for less than two percent of all connections in 2015. Mr. Kurkinen predicts that BYOD will be especially useful for patient-centric engagement programs in therapeutic areas such as diabetes and asthma that have younger patient demographics compared to many other chronic diseases. In fact, many of these patients will prefer to use their own smartphone as the interface instead of carrying around a dedicated device for remote monitoring.

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About Berg Insight
Berg Insight is a dedicated M2M/IoT market research firm based in Sweden. We have been specialising in all major M2M/IoT verticals such as fleet management, car telematics, smart metering, smart homes, mHealth and industrial M2M since 2004. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers. Berg Insight offers numerous market reports, detailed market forecast databases and advisory services. We provide custom research tailored to your requirements including focussed research papers, business case analysis, go-to-market strategies and bespoke market forecasting. In addition to M2M/IoT, we are also active within Location-Based Services, mobile Value-Added Services and Next Generation Technologies. We have provided analytical services to 800 clients in 69 countries on six continents to date. Our customers range from many of the world’s largest mobile operators, IT companies and telecom vendors, to venture capitalists, technology start-ups and specialist consultants.