The outlook for the global mHealth market is very promising, a new market report says, with the industry poised to exceed $49.1 billion by 2020.

According to San Francisco-based Grand View Research, monitoring services are projected to remain the dominant and most rapidly growing market segment, with revenue topping $1.2 billion in 2012, and seeing a nearly 50 percent CAGR from 2014 to 2020.

Although healthcare expenditures are among the lowest rates on record – a 3.7 percent spending increase in 2012, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – they're still on an upward trajectory, making medical services unaffordable for a percentage of the population, report officials point out. As a result, hospitals, providers and payers are looking to the financially favorable mHealth market.

Some 95 million Americans were using mHealth technologies this past year, up 27 percent from the year before, according to a recent Manhattan Research Cybercitizen Health study.

An increase in smartphones and the 3G and 4G networks needed to make them ubiquitous is poised to fuel the demand for telehealth services. An aging population and growing incidences of diseases linked to changing lifestyles have intensified the need for affordable and accessible healthcare. Among the concerns associated with this growth are the safety and privacy of information and the need for secure infrastructure.

Dave Whitlinger, executive director of the New York eHealth Collaborative, says mHealth represents an opportunity to reduce emergency department visits – especially for chronically ill patients who come in as a result of poorly managed care plans. If doctors and care providers can adopt mHealth solutions to help patients avoid lapses in care plans, he said, that could represent some big cost savings.

These solutions require tapping into health information exchanges. Such exchanges among providers, patients and payers is a "public good," Whitlinger said at an eHealth conference last year.

"Nobody really wants electricity," he said. They want vacuum cleaners, lights, heat -- all the things that go with electricity. Similarly, "Nobody really wants health information exchange. They want their records to be liquid; they want records to be available" at their fingertips.

Other findings from the Grand View Research report include:

• Chronic disease management was the largest contributor to the monitoring services market, with higher demand from developed markets of North America and Europe. The market for post acute care services accounted for 19.5 percent of the overall monitoring services revenue in 2012.
• Mobile operators accounted for nearly half of the overall market in 2012, with the majority of their revenue originating from monitoring services such as independent aging solutions. The market for healthcare providers is expected to grow slower than the global average, at an estimated CAGR of 45.1 percent from 2014 to 2020.
• North America dominated the global market, accounting for nearly 34 percent of total revenue in 2012. The highest demand originated from monitoring services, with growing incidences of chronic diseases necessitating the need for mHealth solutions. Driven by the need for accessible healthcare, the Asia Pacific market is expected to be the fastest growing regional market, at an estimated CAGR of 49.1 percent from 2014 to 2020.
• The market comprises many stakeholders, including mobile operators, device vendors and healthcare providers, as well as content players. Companies operating in the market differ on the basis of their offering and play a key role in overall mHealth adoption. Strategic collaborations and partnerships with healthcare providers, and resolving standardization and interoperability issues are essential for mass acceptance.

(This story first appeared in Healthcare IT News)