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Worldwide revenue for home health care devices and services will rise to $12.6 billion in 2018, up from $5.7 billion in 2013, according to a report from IT research firm IHS Technology.
Medical providers’ efforts to reduce costs by taking a more holistic approach to health care will spur a doubling in the global market for home health technologies in the coming years, the report indicated.
Meanwhile, the quantity of patient-generated data will grow exponentially with the increasing use of home health technologies. Big data in health care will determine the success of population health management, which the report said is essential to the business model of accountable-care organizations and their objective of providing value-based care.
“Health care providers are focusing on patient-centered care to increase the quality of medical treatment,” Roeen Roashan, medical devices and digital health analyst at IHS, said in a statement. “By doing this, medical firms hope to attain lower health care expenditures during the lifetime of patients. Home health technologies will play an important role in the continuum of care and in the concept of constantly managing patients’ health.”
From a technology standpoint, the market will experience device convergence, meaning that home health products will become richer in features.
The report noted this has already occurred to some extent with mobile personal emergency response systems (PERS) devices, which are able to act as gateway devices for telehealth, or activity monitors with optical heart-rate sensors.
Furthermore, the report pointed to the trend of consumerism in health care, implying a renewed focus on the patient and on patient needs. This not only is happening in the market for home health technologies, but also in clinical care, health care information technology (IT), and other parts of the medical sector.
“As home health technologies converge, a new generation of comprehensive solutions will provide the foundation for a continuum of care,” Roashan said. “The health care industry has been engaged in an extensive battle against rising expenditures, due to the deteriorating health of the population and the mismanagement of patients. However, with the shift toward value-based care, victory is in sight.”
Roashan pointed to home health technologies as one segment of health care delivery that represent an important factor in accountable-care organizations’ overall goal of providing patient-centered care through population health management.
The research firm defines the home health care market as consisting of six distinct segments: independent living services, consumer medical devices, telehealth, PERS, wearable technologies and health gaming.