Health care goes mobile: 500 million people to use mobile health apps

According to the forecast made in the Global Mobile Health Market Report 2010-2015 compiled by research2guidance over a third of 1.4 billion smartphone users in 2015 will be running some kind of mobile healthcare application.

While the possible benefits of mobile health applications have been much discussed for over a decade it is only now the market is taking off, says Ralf-Gordon Jahns, head of research at research2guidance.

Mobile health (mHealth) applications allow doctors to monitor patients, no matter where they are, in real time.

Using consumer health electronics devices like portable ECG machines, blood pressure monitors and weight scales, physicians today can seamlessly capture and transmit patient information from home, work or from the road.

Currently, there are 17,000 mHealth applications in major app stores, with 74% of them are obtained through application service providers. As more physicians and healthcare facilities embrace mHealth apps, business models will broaden to include healthcare services, sensor, advertising and drug sales revenues, the research2guidance report states.

Seventy-six percent of revenue from the mHealth application market will come from related services and products, such as remote monitoring sensors, according to Mialajunaite.