Last year the global medical device connectivity market was worth $3.5 billion, according to a recent report from Transparency Market Research. The firm expects the market to hit $33.5 billion by 2019 with an impressive compound annual growth rate of nearly 38 percent between 2013 and 2019. Citing the increasing adoption of electronic medical records, Transparency says North America was the largest market for medical device connectivity in 2012 with 62 percent market share.

Despite the rise of wireless technologies in healthcare, wired hardware is still the largest segment of the medical device connectivity market with 40 percent of the market last year. Transparency lists WiFi, wireless medical telemetry service, and Bluetooth as among the most often used wireless technologies connected medical devices in healthcare settings.

"Wireless connectivity technology is expected to witness widespread adoption in MDC owing to its compatibility, interoperability and cost effectiveness over wired technology," the researchers wrote.

The firm's lists of drivers for the market are fairly typical and include the increased need for workflow automation, increased patient safety, saved nursing hours, increased productivity of healthcare institutions, and minimizing the need for re-admissions. The firm argues that integrating medical device data into electronic medical records helps on all these fronts, and that government policies like the United States' Meaningful Use program will drive the market.

Transparency listed a number of leading vendors in the medical device connectivity market but found that Capsule Tech commanded the largest share of the global market in 2012 with about 41 percent market share.

At the beginning of this year, Transparency Market Research, published a report that estimated that worldwide sales for mobile health technologies and services will reach $10.2 billion by 2018, up from $1.3 billion in 2013.