PricewaterhouseCoopers and mobile operator industry association GSMA expect
global mobile health revenues to hit $23 billion by 2017, with the biggest
markets in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
A new report recently issued by the two entities, Touching
lives through mobile health: Assessment of the global market opportunity, projects that European and Asia-Pacific markets will each make up 30% of
global mobile health market share, followed by North America (28%), Latin
America (7%) and Africa (5%).
Monitoring services—particularly those for aiding chronic disease
management and ageing, will constitute about 65%, or $15 billion, of the global
medical health market, followed by diagnostic services and healthcare system
strengthening services, according to the study. Mobile operators will reap
nearly 50% of the growing mobile health market, whereas medical device
manufacturers, app developers and healthcare providers will account for the
remaining market share.
However, this level of growth depends highly upon global regulators
developing effective market authorization requirements that take into account
the nature of mobile health products rather than just pigeon-holing these
products into regulatory systems designed for more conventional medical
devices. PwC and the GSMA acknowledge that regulatory support—as well as
acceptance of mobile health devices by healthcare practitioners and
consumers—is essential to the realization of the study’s projected growth
rates. Although regulators in the US and other highly developed markets have taken initial steps toward
developing a more nuanced approach to mobile medical technologies, substantive
policies regarding mobile health have yet to fully materialize. Until they do,
these study projections should be taken with a healthy grain of salt.