A recently released study by Juniper Research revealed that the digital health market is making dramatic gains, especially in the area of wearable tech and mobile phones. According to the report, applications targeting healthcare will be a driving factor behind the digital market for that industry reaching more than $3 billion over the next five years. The market is rising so fast, in fact, that other research has suggested it may grow to more than twice that size in an even shorter amount of time, with Visiongain predicting the market will be worth $6.7 billion by the end of this year.
Wearable technology has found its way into a variety of industries, but healthcare shows the biggest opportunity for success, according to the study. Healthcare apps are being widely adopted because of the myriad benefits they offer. Wearable health devices can collect a massive amount of user data that can then be analyzed to track trends in a variety of healthcare populations. Having the ability to connect smartphones and tablets to medical devices like heart rate monitors and blood pressure cuffs offers a variety of benefits, like improved in-home monitoring and an enhanced ability to screen for related health issues.
The report suggests that the advancement of electronic health records will create an enhanced and widened digital health environment, as the records can provide a baseline for mobile health databases.The data collected through healthcare applications can also be used to help reduce the price of medical insurance for users. Existing federal laws allow information gathered by wearables and mobile devices to influence the price of health insurance as long as they meet a predefined set of requirements that constitute an employee wellness program. However, now that the growing amount of personal medical data can be integrated into insurance information, it's only a matter of time before more modern frameworks is developed to utilize this new data.
Protect sensitive medial data in the cloud
As more hospitals and healthcare providers adopt the use of wearable medical devices, the ability to store and protect the vast amounts of information created will become a top priority. A reliable way to increase the security of sensitive patient data is to employ cloud storage services. Storing sensitive information in the cloud provides organizations automatic encryption, as well as disaster recovery solutions that ensure necessary data will be available even a primary system were to fail or be damaged. Cloud services are also a cost-effective solution, as they are easy to scale to meet needs.