Saturday, September 12, 2009

Can home health monitoring help cure diseases in EU and the US?


Some 300 million people in the EU and the US currently suffer from welfare diseases, The question is which future medical services can provide a solution that will be both medically efficient and cost affective?

According to a published by research company Berg Insight, the answer to the question is the growing usage of home health monitoring, which has the potential to become a serious treatment option for these patients.

Berg Insight estimates that among welfare patients, about 25% would benefit from existing wireless home monitoring solutions available and another 50% would benefit from handset integration of existing medical devices.

The market for home health monitoring of welfare diseases grows on an annual rate of some 10 percent, according to Berg.

The report concluded that the market for these products, which was worth some $11billion in 2008, will continue to grow at a rapid pace in the near future. It noted, that despite the fact that wireless technologies have only just begun to penetrate the market, they have a huge potential.

The authors noted that the adoption wireless monitoring is driven by a wide range of incentives, related to demographics, technology development and new advancements in medical treatment.

They added that there are several potential catalysts that could speed up the adoption of cellular communication for healthcare monitoring purposes. These include increasing monitoring during clinical trials, insurance company requirements and growing popularity for nonprescribed medical monitoring.

The report said that, while the wireless medical monitoring services generates only neglectable revenue currently, the field shows great potential. The volume of traffic related to medical monitors will increase sharply in the next few years, as new web based services are being established.