Disruption in the Health Care Industry Triggers Partner Opportunity

Disruption in the health care industry was underway before COVID-19 took the world by storm. Now, the demand for telehealth technology is poised to skyrocket seven-fold by 2025, according to Frost & Sullivan research.

One can view telehealth as an opportunity or a challenge. Nevertheless, telehealth providers, enablers and suppliers are in a prime position to reshape health care delivery. This year alone, Frost & Sullivan expects a healthy 64% growth.

Frost & Sullivan’s Victor Camlek

“The critical need for social distancing among physicians and patients will drive unprecedented demand for telehealth, which involves the use of communication systems and networks to enable either a synchronous or asynchronous session between the patient and provider,” said Victor Camlek, health care principal analyst at Frost and Sullivan.

A Closer Look

The research firm provides a preview of what remote patient monitoring (RPM) services might look like.

• A mix of clinical medical device, consumer wearable, connected home and care-based sensors enabled by wireless communications to measure physiological and some behavioral parameters; and an integrated platform with a smartphone that acts as a gateway and securely transfers data to a centralized repository.
• A cloud-based command center where patient data from gateways and diagnostic applications are stored and analyzed.
• Direct transfer/access to patient data, analytics-based optimization parameters, and provider alerts to an enterprise health care IT system.
• Visualization and display software at the health care provider site or monitoring center that can generate treatment recommendations and intervention alerts based on analyzed data.
• Simultaneous direct notification of “intervention needed” alerts to individual patient care team members, using multiple types of mobile and smart devices depending on the individual practitioner preference.
• Selected patient data transferred from family/loved ones using an mHealth application tied to the RPM platform.

Fortune Business Insights research projects the telehealth market to reach nearly $267 billion by 2026. That’s a compound annual growth rate of more than 23%.

In a look at what’s ahead for disruption in the health care industry, HIMSS members named telehealth the biggest disruptor. Participants mentioned it more than any other topic in an online discussion.

Telehealth became a flaming opportunity when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approvaled telehealth reimbursement. Major insurers followed suit.