Trends in Health Care - Recap

I have said it over and over again: the healthcare market is one cow ready to be milked. Market Forces like an aging population, health care economics/politics (more and more laws regard the prevention of disease – preventative management), acute need for highly trained specialists and care takers, consumerism drive, increasing demand for portability, ease of use, targeted use, miniaturization and a confusing regulatory pathway shape it into a profitable yet difficult market.

As far device technology goes, the importance of interoperability cannot be stressed enough while the limitations of batteries drive innovation into specific target areas. Wireless is becoming ubiquitous under these considerations (e.g., Bluetooth Health Device Profile) and low energy consumption is also becoming an ardent issue with research into LPR (Low Power Radio) e.g. Zigbee Healthcare and Bluetooth LE. Flexible platforms systems and auto managed power technologies together with and increased RF traffic challenge the tasks of designers.

Data Management (e.g., PHR, EMR, HIO, HIE) is another aspect of the entire environment that sets its fingerprint on the evolution of things. The general impression is that of organized chaos with the basics being still undecided. The principles of ownership, security, privacy, reimbursement, mobility, management, metadata, flexibility, useful sharing or those of regional vs state vs interstate vs national are still under heated debate. Continua tries to step in and shed light on some of these issues, but most of the times the time required is just too much for actual solutions to be adopted. Just two months ago in Brussels the report "Enabling smart integrated care: Recommendations for fostering greater interoperability of personal health systems" (The SmartPersonalHealth project is a Support Action project partially funded by the Directorate-General Information Society of the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme) tries to pinpoint the major challenge for the growing personal health solutions market down to the failure to address interoperability. With so much government oversight and funding coming from different boosters competition between players does not fail to rise (e.g., Dossia, Google Health), despite the cooperation between companies that is obvious just by looking at the alliance and the decisions taken at this level about standards.  

All these trends make companies invest a lot of money in products and mobile health applications. These are only the latest products but the numbers are increasing quickly approaching the market potential forecast up to $1,348 million in 2011, as projected by Park Associates in their Wireless Healthcare: Analysis and Forecast in 2009.