Aerotel ready to conquer Asian market

Armed with a new investment by a Chinese IT giant and wide variety of innovative solutions, Israeli medical equipment provider Aerotel Medical Systems is ready to utilize its vest experience and enter the fast growing Asian telemedicine market.

Aerotel, which provides modular, mobile and home based telemedicine and telecare solutions, has recently attracted an investment from China's Neusoft Corporation. 

The move is part of Aerotel's overall strategy of expanding its activity in Asia in general and in the Chinese lucrative market in particular. A recent report by Espicom Business Intelligence estimates that the Chinese medical device market grows at an annual rate of some 13 percent, turning it into one of the fastest growing markets in the world.

The analysts noted that prospects for medical devices spending are huge as the Chinese government has committed heavily in the construction of thousands of hospitals, healthcare centers, clinics. This will inevitably lead to spending on medical devices at an unprecedented rate in a relatively short space of time.

Aerotel intends to utilize Neusoft's position as a local market leader in the fields of medical equipment, medical IT solutions and healthcare services. The company will offer Asian populations cost-effective, high-quality and user-friendly medical diagnostic systems and devices for home care, eHealth and telemedicine, as well as telecare and personal safety.

With a client base of over 50 countries around the globe and more than a decade of rich experience, Aerotel is well positioned to successfully enter the Asian market. Judging by its previous practice, the company has all it takes to smoothly penetrate large markets.

So for example, Aerotel is currently providing Ambulance staffs in Brazil with devices to monitor people injured in car accidents or and other emergency situations. By using Aerotel's solution, paramedics can record ECG trace and transmit it within minutes to a remote medical centre using their mobile phones. The service provides significant benefits, including critical time savings, enhanced level of emergency treatment, expert guidance to the ambulance staff and increased chances for patient recovery form critical situations.

In the United States, Aerotel provides remote monitoring services of health problems for congestive heart failure patients. The technology, which allows heart patients take readings like their weight, blood pressure and other key metrics, saves money and makes users life much easier.

In Europe, Aerotel's GeoSKeeper personal safety and location system has won great popularity. The mobile service enables the accurate location of seniors, children and lone workers. By wearing the light-weight device on their wrist the users' accurate location can be sent to family and caregivers in real time. 

 A report published last year by research company, Global Industry Analysts, predicts that the global market for ECG telemetry devices will reach some $1.1 billion by 2015. 

The analysts, which defined Aerotel as one of the major players in this field, noted that Asia-Pacific represents the fastest growing market as it is expected to grow by an annual rate of more than 5 percent over the next four years. 

This is attributed to aging population and growing cases of heart disease or cardiovascular diseases. In addition, rising expenditure and scarcity of alternative home care resources and services are expected to add to growing demand for home telemetry monitoring devices.

Aerotel, which recently launched its services in New Zealand and Australia, is now aiming at the growing Chinese market, allowing it to establish a strong foothold in the Asia-Pacific market.  

World telehealth market to reach $990 million by 2015

The global telehealth market is expected to continue growing at a command annual growth rate (CAGR) of 43.4 percent to $990 million by 2015, according to a report by medical research company InMedica.

InMedica analysts predict that the market will continue to rise to over $1 billion in 2016 and has the potential to reach $6 billion by 2020. 

The authors said that increasing demand for healthcare, associated with ever increasing disease prevalence and an ageing population creates a significant challenge for the delivery of care. The number of people with chronic condition is forecast to increase dramatically by 10%-20% over the next ten years. Moreover, the aging demographic will lead to a significant increase in disease co-morbidities in the population that is over-65. 

Telehealth, also known as Telemedicine, means using information and communications technologies for the delivery of healthcare services. Telehealth reduces the unnecessary hospitalizations and reduces waiting lists for medical treatment with a significant saving factor on economic resources. This technology gives patients the ability to monitor the specific parameters of their conditions and then have the information sent directly to their physicians for management of their disease process via telephone, cellular or the Internet.

Telehealth has become a rapidly evolving field, thanks to recent technological breakthroughs, such as miniaturized sensors and advancements in telecommunications means that allow an almost permanent contact in case of need. Telehealth can offer cost-effective remote monitoring solutions that can seamlessly operate from anywhere at anytime. 

The report illustrates that home-monitoring is becoming increasingly relevant in the treatment of chronic diseases. Home-use medical devices in Teleheatlh services, such as blood glucose meters, pulse oximeters, weight scales and peak flow meters are being deployed to monitor four main diseases – congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes and hypertension.

"The main driving force behind the sharp growth of the Telehealth market are the new solutions for monitoring chronic diseases answering the growing need for such solutions that will hold down healthcare costs," said Ofer Atzmon, Vice President for Business Development and Marketing at Aerotel Medical Systems. "From our experience the strongest demand is for hypertension (monitoring of blood pressure) solutions, followed by diabetes (monitoring of glucose and blood pressure), CHF (monitoring of blood pressure and weight) and COPD (monitoring of SpO2 and spirometry values)."

“Many public healthcare systems now have targets to reduce both the number of hospital visits and the length of stay in hospital,” said Diane Wilkinson, Research Manager at InMedica. “This has led to a growing trend for healthcare to be managed outside the traditional hospital environment, and as a result, there is a growing trend for patients to be monitored in their home environment using telehealth technologies once their treatment is complete.”

She noted that the US is the most established market for telehealth by far. So for example, the Veteran’s Health Administration’s extensive home Telehealth service aims to provide some 92,000 patients with Telehealth services by next year. Wilkinson added that there has also been some large-scale trial activity in Europe, mainly in the UK.

iPhone mHealth application market to grow by 44% to 13,000 apps in 2012

Some 9,000 iPhone health applications are already offered by Apple's AppStore and the number is expected to continue rising further in coming months, according to a report published by MobiHealthNews.

The report, which is based on an analysis of Apple's AppStore, further indicates that by next summer the number of iPhone health applications will rise by 44 percent to some 13,000 apps.

The report shows that the average price of a paid health app is gradually rising as the average price for a paid health application rose to $3.21 on July 2011 from $2.77 in February.

Another report, published earlier this month by research company Technavio, predicts that the global mobile health applications market will reach $4.1 billion by 2014 compared to $1.7 billion in 2010.

"The number of health apps for consumers has grown at a steady, linear rate over the past 18 months," MobileHealthNews researchers wrote. "We expect it to continue on this track unless the regulatory environment changes drastically and scares off would-be developers from creating useful health apps for consumers"

The MobiHealthNews report indicates that the largest group of consumer health apps in the AppStore are cardio fitness apps, which account to 16.36% of all iPhone mHealth apps. The majority of these apps are running apps, which have attracted millions of users in the past year.

Diet related apps account to 14.15%, ahead of stress and relaxation apps (11.4%) and women's health apps (7.27%).

The authors note that while Apple’s health, fitness and medical categories claim to offer thousands more apps, many of these can't be seriously considered as mHealth related.

Aerotel enters Australia and New Zealand, partners with Elemental

Aerotel Medical Systems has launched a new personal safety service in New Zealand and Australia in partnership with Elemental Technologies, a leading Australasian provider of solutions for personal safety, aged care and healthcare.

Elemental Technologies will offer a new 24 hours by 7 days a week service, based on Aerotel’s highly successful GeoSKeeper personal safety and location system. The service will enable finding the accurate location and providing immediate assistance to elderly persons or people with dementia, offering users and family members safety and peace of mind. In addition, GeoSkeeper will be distributed in New Zealand and Australia by Elemental Technologies.

"We have formed a partnership with Elemental Technologies to bring our personal safety solutions to the Australia and New Zealand markets,” said Ofer Atzmon, Vice President for Business Development and Marketing at Aerotel. “This agreement is another step in our global market expansion."

“After conducting a comprehensive search, we have found GeoSKeeper to be the most sophisticated and well established personal safety device on the market,” said Patrick Rogers, CEO and Co-founder at Elemental Technologies. “The combination of mobile phone and GPS technologies grants freedom to the wearer to travel away from home or work and confidence to their caregivers that they can be located and communicated with, anytime and anywhere.”

Report: global mHealth apps market to reach $4.1 billion by 2014

The global mobile health applications market is expected to reach $4.1 billion by 2014 compared to $1.7 billion in 2010, according to a report published by research company Technavio.

The company's analysts said they expect the market to grow by an impressive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24% percent until 2014.

The report indicates that the key drivers for growth are the increase in general diseases and population of patients.  It adds that the main source of revenue in this field will comes from smartphones used by the healthcare professionals.

Technavio estimates that the United States has the largest market share and is expected to grow at a faster rate in the future. The authors said that in the coming years, due to increasing focus on patients in developing nations, mobile Health software providers and telecom companies may penetrate further in countries such as China and India.

The analysts noted that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) intends to come up with proper rules for the approval of mobile health applications. This will, in turn, increase the productivity and the accuracy of these apps in the future.

At the same time, the analysts warned that there have not been proper or effective FDA rules and regulations yet. "FDA regulations seem to be more confusing than helpful to many vendors in the mHealth industry," Technavio wrote. "With the advent of numerous new Mobile Health applications being introduced in the market by various players, the FDA is finding it difficult to come up with any specific parameters for the Mobile Health applications".

Growing number of medical experts move into mHealth apps field

Growing interest in mobile health applications has led to a sharp increase in the number of mHealth apps developed by universities, hospitals and other research institutes.

These organizations want to seize opportunities arising from widely circulating suggestions that the healthcare industry is facing a possible crisis. A report published last year by Pyramid Research indicates there is a global deficit of 2.4 million healthcare workers and an international shortage of hospital beds worldwide. This is leading to a situation in which governments, healthcare providers and insurance carriers are desperate to develop solutions that lower costs and improve patient care.

CATRA: Cataract Maps with Snap-on
Eyepiece for Mobile Phones

Unlike other consumer applications, developing medical apps requires a strong scientific background. The telemedicine field attracts researchers as it offers them an opportunity to utilize their medical knowledge to enter one of the fastest growing and most popular markets.

“In the past, most projects offered by academic researchers remained on the drawing board and most of them never materialized into commercial products,” said Ofer Atzmon, Vice President for Business Development and Marketing at Aerotel Medical Systems.

“It remains to be seen if the growing popularity of mHealth will change this trend, and whether more scientific research projects will turn into commercial applications.”

Pyramid Research predicts that the mHealth technologies market will approach $5 billion by 2014 and more than double by 2020.

Here are several examples of applications and other mHealth solutions developed by researchers from the academic world.

DailyData - a mobile app that can tell users when they’re getting sick, based on models and predictions developed in MIT.

CATRA – a solution to detect and quantify cataracts with a compact eyepiece attached to a cell phone, also developed by MIT researchers.

Open mHealth – a project dedicated to apps that collect health-related information developed at UCLA and UCSF.

iTrem – an application allowing Parkinson’s disease patients to collect and send medical information developed by researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Nerve Whiz – an app for medical professionals interested in learning the anatomy of nerve roots, plexuses and peripheral nerves, designed by a neuromuscular neurologist at the University of Michigan.

If you know of any other applications that were developed by researchers please tell us about it in the comment box and we will update the post.

Report: Telemedicine companies should explore granting free trial period

A brief use of a Web-based telemedicine service has a significant positive effect on patients' perceptions of the service, according to a survey conducted by a team of Dutch experts.

The researchers, from the University of Twente, concluded that healthcare providers should consider offering patients a risk-free way to explore and experiment telemedicine services. They said that by doing so telemedicine companies can increase the development of accurate perceptions and user needs.  

The survey focused on investigating whether patients' perceptions of Web-based telemedicine services changed after brief use. The research included 30 patients, who were divided into a control group and an experimental group. The results indicated that patients within the experimental group became significantly more positive about the usefulness and ease-of-use after a very short period of use. 

The report indicates that despite the great potential of telemedicine user acceptance proves one important barrier to implementation in mainstream healthcare. 

"These results show the significant positive effect of brief use of a telemedicine service on patients' perceptions of this service," The authors concluded. "Therefore, it is important to offer patients the opportunity to experiment with the service to foster the development of accurate beliefs, which will consequently result in more adequate user needs possibly benefiting patient acceptance."