Digital Lifescapes

Activity tracker shipments continued to grow in 2015 -- up almost 80 percent over 2014. Shipment totals will top 87 million in 2021 as these devices continue to lead consumers into the emerging wearable wireless connected health and well-being market, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. "Activity trackers are the current vanguard device for bringing consumers into connected medical services,” said Jonathan Collins, principal analyst at ABI Research . "As they continue to proliferate, they will spur greater investment in mHealth device development and adoption, as well as the services that can help bring the data these devices collect into health care provision." Essential Network Platforms and Infrastructure Despite the increasing popularity of activity trackers, the professional medical device market still awaits the shift to connected devices that has been underway in the consumer fitness market over the past few years. Connected medical devic...

The healthcare information technology (IT) sector is evolving, albeit slowly. According to the latest study by Technology Business Research (TBR), global market growth in healthcare IT services (HITS) began to rebound in the first quarter of 2015 (1Q15), accelerating 170 basis points sequentially to 6.5 percent on a trailing 12-month basis. TBR attributes much of the increase to the inorganic impact of the strategic acquisitions made in 2014 by Cognizant (TriZetto) and Cerner (Siemens Health Services). Net of these acquisitions, TBR estimates average weighted year-to-year growth in 1Q15 would have been between 5.3 percent and 5.6 percent. "In 2014 TBR observed the electronic health record (EHR) market mature, primarily in North America, as large-scale implementations undertaken in prior years by major provider organizations began to wind down," said John Caucis, senior analyst at TBR . "However, many providers have discovered, much to to their dismay, that EHR in...

The Internet of Things revolves around emerging use cases. If you want to see meaningful applications, then look to healthcare.  According to the latest market study by Berg Insight, around 3.0 million patients worldwide were already using connected home medical monitoring devices at the end of 2013. This current installed base comprises all patients that were remotely monitored by a professional caregiver in the healthcare industry. Note, patients that use connected medical devices for personal health and fitness tracking are not included in this figure. By 2018, Berg Insight estimates that the number of patients using connected home medical monitoring devices will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 44.4 percent to 19.1 million. The main application is monitoring of patients with implantable cardiac rhythm management (CRM) devices, which with 2.0 million connections accounted for nearly two thirds of all connected home medical monitoring devices in 2013. Sleep...

Wearable devices have been in existence for a number of decades, but it's only recently that they have captured the imagination of the general public. Juniper Research has revealed that the retail revenue from smart wearable devices -- including smart watches and glasses -- will reach $19 billion by 2018 compared with $1.4 billion this year. Moreover, revenues will be driven by high price points for these devices allied to their anticipated strong market demand. Based on the findings from its latest market study, Juniper has revised upwards the adoption of devices in the two key segments of consumer electronics ‘Multimedia & Entertainment’, and ‘Multi-functional’ devices. Revisions such as these are common in the early years of a new technology category, and reflect the latest announcements from vendors across the sector. "It is worth observing that this change in adoption levels can also be attributable to heightened consumer awareness of wearable technology and a...

More analysts are assessing the upside opportunities for mobile health and fitness-related apps. In a new assessment of the mobile healthcare market, ABI Research finds wearable wireless device revenues will grow to exceed $6 billion in 2018. Of the four wearable device segments tracked, sports, fitness and wellness is the largest -- never dropping below 50 percent share of all device shipments over the forecast period. "Fitness activity trackers are quickly gaining popularity in the market. Different from other more single-use or event-centric devices, activity trackers monitor multiple characteristics of the human body including movement, calories burned, body temperature, and sleep tracking," said Adarsh Krishnan, senior analyst at ABI Research . Activity trackers are expected to grow at a 40 percent CAGR and overtake the 2013 shipment leader, heart rate monitors, in 2017. The second largest market -- home monitoring devices -- which, primarily target the growing ...

Underpinning the emerging mHealth and mFitness markets are two sectors, healthcare and health & fitness. The trends in those two industries define how the adjacent mHealth and mFitness markets develop. Together, they form the basis for a multimillion dollar global market opportunity. The next five years will see a major shift towards smartphone-based mHealth, where hardware attachments link to companion app on the smartphone, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research. They now forecast that by 2018 there will be 96 million users of app-enabled mHealth and mobile-fitness hardware devices, that's up from 15 million this year. In the healthcare sector, app-enabled mHealth will be used to provide services ranging from remote patient monitoring to mobile ultrasound services. How mFitness will Set the Pace However, the market study found that it will be the mFitness sector that will experience strongest growth in the short and medium term. This growth wi...