Smartphones Drive Mobile Health

A population that is on the move will increasingly turn to mobile health applications, predicts a new market study.

The Hampshire, England-based Juniper Research Ltd. projects that mobile networks will monitor 3 million patients by 2016, according to a company news release. The growth will be fueled in part by increasingly more capable smartphones, the company says.

U.S. insurers already offer reimbursement for mobile cardiac monitoring, which makes the monitoring of cardiac outpatients the top remote monitoring field, according to Jupiter. But the analysis projects growth in the monitoring of other chronic diseases, including diabetes and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

Other projections:

• Consumers will download 44 million mHealth and medical applications this year.
• That number will grow to 142 million in 2016.
• Electronic health records will eventually be an important piece of mHealth offerings.
• Smartphone-based patient monitoring will replace expensive specialized remote monitoring systems and drive down mHealth costs.