The International Trade Administration (ITA) www.trade.gov at the Department of Commerce recently published “2015 Top Markets Report for Health IT: A Market Assessment Tool for U.S. Exporters”. The projected top markets for Health IT exports for 2015-2018 are Japan, Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Austria, and South Korea.
The report primarily focuses on mobile health and telehealth. Mobile health and telehealth are appealing since they can be adopted widely while at the same time be tailored to individual markets.
According to the report, the market for telehealth is expected to grow 17.7 percent globally between now and 2019, where it is expected to reach $43 billion. While telehealth in the hospital setting has accounted for the majority of the market to date, new growth will be primarily in reaching out to individuals in their homes, or in outpatient settings, which is estimated to reach 55 percent market share by 2019.
While deployment of telehealth remains a priority, coordinated efforts towards universal standards and policies have been slow with most progress made at the county level, particularly by countries outside of the G8.
Although the increasing popularity of mobile health may eventually constrain the size of the telehealth market, telehealth growth is still expected to occur in countries with large rural populations or where there is an unequal geographic distribution between trained medical professionals and the general population.
The market for mobile devices is expected to increase worldwide but at a lower rate in the future because of market saturation. However, it is still estimated that 450 million people worldwide live in places still out of reach of mobile phone service.
Go to http://export.gov/industry/health/eg_main_086864.asp to view the full report.