Description
The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) powers industry momentum in digital health and reinvents healthcare organization.
CONNECTED MEDICAL DEVICES: THE DIGITAL HEALTH REVOLUTION HAS STARTED
Healthcare is facing one of its most major turning points in decades. After penetrating the consumer market, the digital revolution and its related concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly changing health models. There are many reasons for this transformation. The population is growing and aging, and chronic diseases are exploding. More than 415 million people are living with diabetes worldwide and there are more than 1.5 billion people at risk of cardiovascular diseases. The number of doctors and nurses has stayed consistently flat, as health budgets are shrinking in many regions. Fortunately, connected devices and smartphones are now widespread. People are managing their lives through apps and clouds, and now can do the same with their health, from hospital to home or even just walking in the street.
This report analyzes the dynamics of the connected medical devices market and how its current $9B revenues will grow at a rate of 16% year-over-year through to 2022 to reach more than $23B. Healthcare is shifting to a patientcentric model with nearly 20% growth over the period to 2022 for the segment of self-quantified devices. This compares to single-digit growth for connected implantable devices, which face serious security issues. Preventive and predictive medicine and even participative medicine are on the way to supplement evidence-based approaches, using the large volumes of data generated by these connected medical devices.
INNOVATIVE MODELS AND NEW PLAYERS ARE RESHAPING HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATION
Current changes in healthcare require innovative business models to be created, involving new players from different fields. The performance of these new models needs to be evaluated. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is at the crossroads of medical devices, telecommunications and Information Technology (IT). A whole infrastructure has to be set up, involving new players in the medical area. Patients receive data from their inhalers or insulin pens to manage their medication, doses and alerts. Physicians are able to follow their patients’ records and could see them only when needed, saving visit costs.
Health insurance now pays for prescribed medication after a doctor’s diagnosis. Hospitalization costs to insurance companies are increasing year-over-year due to lack of monitoring or low patient adherence. Connected medical devices could allow “selfquantified” monitoring and could send alerts before patient crises or accidents. But demonstrating that better self-management of chronic disease and better medication adherence will cost less to insurance companies is not an easy task. It means that when insurance companies reimburse connected medical devices they must include the cost of infrastructure including telecommunication and mobile apps. Prescribers and payers are also taking the IoMT opportunity with inventive new models.
Additionally, the IoMT represents a huge opportunity for new players such as IBM and its Watson Augmented Intelligence system to enter the healthcare market and to bring computing power for predictive medicine, as well as the relevant infrastructure to operate connected devices from home, hospitals or anywhere data needs to be shared. Qualcomm Life’s 2net and Capsule Tech solutions are likewise dedicated to IoMT applications. These and several other examples are described in this report.
And what about Google, Apple and the other giants? The medical device market is far from their field of interest due to its low volumes, strict regulations, and long development time. Yes, the limits of consumer healthcare are well enough established today to escape the strong restrictions on medical data. But with monetization of data being key for giant companies, regulations on medical data are still more constraining compared to consumers’ private data. This situation creates opportunities for start-up companies to develop connected medical devices. Consolidation of the market and of the supply chain will occur later with series of mergers and acquisitions aiming to gather together the most innovative products and regroup solutions with high levels of synergy.
TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW: FROM REUSING SENSOR INNOVATION TO DEDICATED DEVICES
Sensors are at the heart of connected medical devices to measure phenomena such as heart rate, blood glucose level and detection of people’s falls. This report covers the MEMS-based sensor market and trends within it. Portable, wearable and implantable connected medical devices are not dedicated to hospital and physician use any more. They now need to be adapted to patient use with the smallest size possible, ease of use and the minimum number of constraints. The first step for medical device manufacturers is to connect their products to the telecommunication infrastructure and to patients’ smartphones and tablets. Significant efforts have been made at the software level to make systems safe and protect data.
The hardware part represents 5%-10% of connected devices’ value when using sensors that are existing components taken from other applications, enabling smooth innovation. Connected consumer devices have largely contributed to the miniaturization of electronics using MEMS technologies and successful component design decreasing power consumption requirements. Dedicated sensors with high levels of accuracy and reliability should be the next wave of the IoMT innovation.
Strong efforts will be made to provide vital medical grade measurements with less invasive devices. For example, thanks to the development of microneedle arrays, patches or smartwatches should replace painful glucometers. We expect the IoMT sensor wave to come after 2022 and increase the global value share that sensors will claim in hardware. Healthcare is a market changing slowly with regards to innovation and needs to use available approved devices. Technology descriptions and current developments will be the focus of a future report.
Objectives of the Report
- This report introduces the concept of IoMT and related medical devices in an increasingly connected world.
- It describes how the health organization is changing with new business models to create, and new value creation from generated data.
- It evaluates the market of connected devices, gives penetration rates compared to nonconnected devices and analyzes the dynamics.
- It identifies the medical device and assistance device main players, giving an overview of the main products and developments.
- The report gives a selected list of technology drivers and trends.
- It informs readers about regulations, connectivity protocols and security for data exchanges.
