Part of the digital health revolution is the increasing role that individuals take in managing their own healthcare. The “quantified self” generates mountains of data that can be used by professionals to detect illness and track progress, but this same information can also be used by individuals. As better tools to measure and track our health-related information become available, more and more people will take advantage of it. These connected technologies for home use have given rise to a new market segment: “health self-monitoring.”
BCC Research recently published a market trend report, “Health Self-monitoring: Technologies and Global Markets.” The highlights of the report reveal some interesting conclusions. The BCC analysts predict that this global segment will from from $20.7 billion in 2017 to $71.9 billion by 2022. That’s a hefty 28.3% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over five years. The bulk of these sales will be for peripheral devices, such as weight scales and blood pressure machines, activity counters and sleep sensors. Software for self-monitoring will also grow rapidly, but will only account for $1 billion of the total in 2020.
In parallel with this growth, we expect to see greater use of connected monitoring technology by hospitals and other third parties, such as tracking the recovery of post-discharge patients. Combined, these two trends are likely to result in more people tracking more types of data about their health in their own homes. The information will be stored, shared, and automatically analyzed by AI-driven machine learning systems to flag changes that may need attention by the individual or a healthcare professional. We also expect that this will result in earlier diagnosis and treatment for a wide range of diseases and conditions, lower-cost treatments, better outcomes, and generally better health for people on the whole.
