Steven R. Gerst: Remote Health and Home Patient Monitoring Achieves Staggering Growth in 2015.

Fort Lauderdale, FL, December 28, 2015 (Newswire.com) - ​Fort Lauderdale, FL, December 28, 2015 (Newswire.com) - ​The remote health and home patient monitoring market is realizing tremendous growth, with the number of remotely monitored patients increasing by 51 percent to 4.9 million in 2015. Its continued growth is expected to surge another 13.2 percent over the next five years, according to health industry professionals. This number includes all patients who are enrolled in mHealth care programs in which connected medical devices are used in part of the health care treatment. Driving this growth and positive market reception is the increased demand to treat chronically ill and elderly patients, impending doctor shortages, and critical advances in mobile technology.

Integral components in remote patient monitoring (RPM) include tools such as clinical grade monitors, software, and other devices that enable the monitoring of patients outside of traditional clinical environments and are often set inside the patient’s home. The ability to manage the patient from a remote location improves the delivery of healthcare to the patient, increases early detection, prevents complications, minimizes costs, prevents emergency room visits, reduces hospital stays and significantly reduces hospital readmission for Congestive Heart Failure, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorders (COPD), Diabetes and other high cost chronic disorders which the CDC indicates costs 86% of the U.S healthcare dollars. 

Dr. Steven Gerst: As RPM increases proficiency, it increases the need for wireless mobility and hastens its own demand in community and institutional environments.

Remote patient monitoring allows patients and their caregivers to utilize applications that collect and transmit critical physiological data to their healthcare providers for evaluation, such as blood pressure, heart rate, electrocardiogram, blood glucose levels, pulse oximetry, blood oxygen saturation, body/core temperature, detection of movement, change in gait and other key vital signs for screening and chronic care monitoring at home or in a long term care/assisted living facility.

RPM supports safety and can report falls for patients prone to life threatening conditions using constant surveillance. The data collected from RPM enables timely alerts and intervention of any potential problems that may arise in a chronically ill or elderly patient. RPM aids those with Diabetes, patients with heart and breathing conditions, and can even assist patients who suffer from dementia using tracking capabilities via WIFI, global positioning system or radio frequency to help locate elders who may possibly get lost or wander off.

Cellular connectivity has already taken the place of PSTN and LAN as the standard communication technology for most types of connected home medical monitoring devices. According to Berg Insight, it will account for 19.2 million connections by 2020, Berg Insight also suggests that the use of patients’ mobile devices are proving to be a more preferred and efficient option to RPM, and will be used for approximately 15.2 million patients by 2020 as well.

It is predicted that RPM revenues are expected to grow at a CAGR of 32.1 percent between 2015 and 2020, reaching between $25 billion by the end of this period. Connected medical devices accounted for 71 percent of total RPM revenues in 2015. Revenues for mHealth connectivity solutions, care programs, and care delivery platforms are increasing at an accelerated rate and will account for 46.3 percent of the projected $38 billion in total telemedicine revenues by 2020, up from just 29 percent of the expected $18.5 Billion in telemedicine in 2015. Much of these data can be found in the most current Berg Insight research report.

Steven R. Gerst: With 4.9 million patients being remotely monitored worldwide, incorporation of more connectivity in medical devices and pharmaceuticals will create new services and drive RPM growth.   

The sleep therapy sector is growing at a rapid rate and is projected to top implantable cardiac rhythm management (CRM) in 2016, as the number of patients undergoing remotely monitored sleep therapy grew by 170 percent in 2015.  Other market segments that are predicted to achieve rapid growth over the next five years include glucose monitoring, airflow monitoring, and connected pharmaceuticals, according to Berg Insight’s latest research series report. Notable connected healthcare innovators mentioned in this report consist of new entrants and veteran players that include AstraZeneca, Dexcom, Merck, Novartis, Propeller Health, Proteus Digital Health, Roche, Sanofi, Voluntis and WellDoc.

Dr. Steven Gerst: As Remote Patient Monitoring continues to rapidly evolve, hurdles still remain to overcome.

Care delivery platforms and connectivity solutions have seen the most rapid development industry wide in 2015. Care delivery platforms are integral software applications that enable the remote delivery of health services, as well as coordinated care efforts between patients, healthcare providers, caregivers, and others involved with the patient’s healthcare, such as family members.

Care delivery platforms are essential in including patients in their own care and delivering remote monitoring services to large groups of people cost effectively. A variety of care delivery platforms are available, including general-purpose platforms that can deliver a broad range of services for various cases. mHealth connectivity solutions include products and services that are used for collecting data from medical monitoring devices, and communicating this data to caregivers while allowing the data to be used by care delivery platforms.

The adoption of remote patient monitoring solutions is being propelled by everything from demographics and technology development to new advancements in medical treatment. However, as noted by Berg Insight, there are a number of challenges that still exist, including resistance to change among healthcare organizations and clinicians, poor and unbalanced incentive structures and the financing of wireless solutions by a healthcare sector that is severely underfunded.

Even amid the hurdles, facilitators are nevertheless advancing the rate of adoption, specifically with incentives from payers and insurance companies, national health systems that support remote monitoring and a shift to performance-based payment models.

To learn more about the latest growth in remote health and home monitoring, visit: www.stevenrgerst.com.

Steven R. Gerst is Dean Emeritus of the Masters of Science in Applied Health Informatics and Professor, Bryan University. He is currently at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine in the Office of the Chief Innovation Officer and Vice Provost as an “Entrepreneur–in-Residence,” and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Nova Southeastern University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Dr. Gerst is a graduate of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (M.D.), Columbia College (B.A.), Columbia School of Public Health – Health Administration (M.P.H.) and the Goizuetta School of Business at Emory University (M.B.A.). He is a Diplomat in the American College of Healthcare Executives