Parks Associates: Networked Medical Devices to exceed 14 million unit sales in 2018

New digital health research from Parks Associates predicts U.S. unit sales of networked medical devices will exceed 14 million units by 2018, more than five times the sales from 2012. In the report Networked Medical Devices: Innovations & Business Models, analysts attribute multiple factors in driving this market, including an aging population and reforms spearheaded by the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

"The addressable market for networked medical devices includes 68 million Americans with hypertension and 26 million with diabetes," said Harry Wang, Director, Health & Mobile Product Research, Parks Associates. "Consumers are also demanding more autonomy in managing their care, which will drive the market in 2014 to improve patients' self-care experience. Network connectivity will enable new business models built on health software and services instead of hardware and consumable sales."

Parks Associates reports networked medical devices, including weight scales, glucometers, and ECGs, will use a variety of networking protocols, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and ANT+, to enable patient self-care and point-of-care diagnosis. The networking functions on these medical devices create the need to aggregate sensor, test, and behavioral data, so solutions such as Qualcomm Life's 2Net platform, which aggregates device data and can transmit to the cloud, will become more important in 2014.

"The health data gateway market will garner substantial interest from both device makers and care providers," Wang said. "Health data will be a hot commodity in this ACA era. Device makers and health data gateway providers, both incumbents and start-ups, will leverage these data to build new revenue opportunities and create new business partnerships."

Parks Associates analysts noted Alere's acquisition of MedApps adds a cloud-based solution to the company's offerings. Omron Healthcare's Bluetooth blood-pressure monitor is competing with smartphone-based WiThings' solution, and Insulet's OmniPod Insulin Pump will face challenges from San Diego-based Tandem Diabetes Care and U.K.-based CellNovo. In niche device categories such as pulse oximeter and sleep apnea test devices, innovations from incumbents such as Nonim, Masimo, and ResMed and start-ups such as iHealth Labs and NovaSom will broaden the use cases of these devices for both end users and care professionals.

Device categories analyzed in Networked Medical Devices: Innovations & Business Models include weight scale, blood-pressure monitor, glucometer, insulin pump, ECG, pulse oximeter, sleep apnea test, and home INR test.

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