M2M for Patient Care Monitoring

The 65+ age group is slated to experience a strong growth in the coming years. As we age so do our needs for frequent check checkups and fixes to ensure we are in good health - same as a car - Older the car the more trips to the Auto Repair Shops. Looking at the graph below we see a sharp increase in the 65+ population in starting around 2010. This segment will be in need of frequent high end medical care. Once way to meet this need is to staff up the care giver organization - which is very costly. The other option is to improve the efficiency of the current system and use technology to scale up to meet the demand. Remote Patient monitoring is a possible solution to mitigate this problem. This is a classic M2M application that has all the standard challenges of connectivity , Privacy and Security.

Why is Remote Patient Care Attractive?

The remote patient monitoring market is a nascent market. Currently it is valued at $81.1 million dollars in 2005 for the US market. To put this in perspective the total US Disease Management Market was valued at $1.01 billion. This is a small slice but factor in that the majority of the Baby Boomer's will be in need of medical care in the next 5- 10 years and you can sense the potential for this market. The challenge is that this type of new technology and shift in thinking in terms of medical care needs a stimulus for it to become main stream and accepted. Talking about a US centric model this imputes needs to come from the government and or the Health Care provider organizations such as the HMO's. Once these big guns certify and promote this technology it will help reduce the cost burden on the medical system as a whole.

Who Gains from this?

The primary beneficiary in all this is going to be the patient. It will be a lifestyle changing tool that they get access to. The patients will no longer have to endure countless visits to the local clinic for routine checkup's and can have some of the common conditions diagnosed by a remote doctor by looking at their charts. In addition to the lifestyle changes they will also expect to have a longer life expectancy as this is a result of better care. The doctors get additional data to look at and understand and some of this data analysis can be automated - The human body operates like a machine in a set of defined parameters so getting this done should not be a big challenge (I am not a doctor and may be wrong on this). The public at large - as this reduces the growth of the medical cost as borne by society in general.

Remote Patient Monitoring Systems

What are the available patient monitoring systems in the market? Majority of the patient monitoring systems use off the shelf technology - reducing the risk. This does nto come as a surprise as the primary elements of any remote monitoring system are

• Sensors to measure the patient parameter
• Communication Channel to report back
• Ancillary Hardware software for record keeping and Security

Not rocket science - Companies can leverage their existing products to venture into this field as has been done in the past. Here are some providers of Remote Patient Monitoring Service's

• House Call Plus
• Remote Nurse
• Med Star

I would watch this segment of the health care market closely as it evolves over the next few years