Healthcare Internet of Things (IoT) or Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) presents tremendous potential in terms of cost savings, improved profitability, and customer experience. Growth opportunities are plentiful in applications segments such as on-body wearables and implants, in the home, in the community, in the clinic, and in the hospital. These include chronic disease monitoring using smart devices, post-surgery monitoring, smart tricorders, medical support drones, smart diagnostic tools for clinicians, and tools to help hospital rooms become “smart”, as well as early warning systems for patients at risk for code blue emergency. While healthcare stakeholders, including payers, manufacturers, providers, and physicians, recognize their suitability to support the transition from disjointed care to coordinated care and reactive to proactive care delivery, there are concerns surrounding that needs to be addressed such as technology developments for smart tools, industry guidelines, and standards, and most importantly, clinical and patient adoption.
To know more about Frost & Sullivan’s research and to sign up for our Growth Strategy Dialogue, a complimentary one-hour interactive session with Frost & Sullivan’s thought leaders, please click here.
“Ideal IoMT implementation would be like an ecosystem of smart devices that digitize and transform care delivery for higher efficiencies of health care systems resulting in improved care delivery,” said Transformational Health Industry Analyst Siddharth Shah. “However, we are a long way from achieving this objective with the industry facing several hurdles, beginning with cyber security, lack of interoperability, and accuracy of captured data.”
Internet of Medical Things, Forecast to 2021, new research from Frost & Sullivan’s Advanced Medical Technologies Growth Partnership Service program, provides an overview of the current IoMT market landscape, segment-specific challenges, and opportunities, and strategy and important business model considerations for stakeholders and new entrants.
Disruptive innovations possible with the IoMT include:
- Medical-grade wearables and smart implants that communicate patient parameters;
- Virtual assistants at home to help patients and seniors with their self-care, mHealth applications, and smart diagnostic medical devices that support telehealth services;
- Smart cars that can track vitals of passengers during transit;
- Exigency support by drones for emergency response;
- Smart, digitized clinical devices like digital stethoscopes for clinicians in primary care;
- Hospital deployment of RFID, beacon or indoor GPS technologies for navigating within the premises;
- Smart hospital rooms that allow patients to communicate with care teams virtually, from their bedside;
- Temperature-controlled/cold-chain logistics with end-to-end visibility; and
- Kiosks at community centers to improve access to informational services, pharmaceutical products, and telemedicine services.
To view Frost & Sullivan’s latest infographic on how Internet of Medical Things will drive automation in the industry, in the home and hospital settings, please click here.
The IoMT market, which stood at $22.5 billion in 2016, is expected to grow at an impressive compound annual growth rate of 26.2 percent to reach $72.02 billion by 2021. Healthcare majors like Philips and Medtronic, several startups, and even technology giants like Apple, IBM, Cisco and Qualcomm are developing capabilities in IoMT applications. Strong partnerships will be forged to leverage relevant expertise and provide truly useful IoMT products and services.
