The Global Digital Health Market Continues To Grow Owing To the Increase of Demand for Digital Health Platforms and Remote Health Care Services amidst the Highly Contiguous COVID-19 Pandemic

 

Digital health includes categories such as personalized medicine, telemedicine, telehealth, wearable, health information technology (IT), and mobile health (mHealth). The mobile medical applications, software, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and digital technology is driving a revolution in the global healthcare sector. Digital health tools have the vast potentiality to accurately diagnose and treat diseases and also to augment the delivery of health care to the people. These technologies use sensors, software, connectivity, and computing platforms for health care and other related issues. During the COVID-19 situations, digital tools have witnessed remarkable growth in the market because of the global population using these tools for diagnosis and treatments instead of visiting a doctor personally.

Market Dynamics

Digital health programs initiated by the governmental bodies worldwide are expected to fuel the growth of this market. For instance, in early 2016, representatives from over 20 countries, and over 50 international agencies and organizations, along with Global Development Incubator (GDI), HealthEnabled, Dalberg’s Design Impact Group (DIG), and ThoughtWorks, initiated a new concept called Global Digital Health Index at the World Health Assembly. This initiative aims to evaluate, monitor, and track the use of digital technology in the global healthcare domain. The Global Digital Health Index is also estimated to empower the health ministers across all policymakers, investors, and governments for taking strategic decisions to improve the global digital health scenario.

The rapid increase of COVID-19 cases across the globe has resulted in stringent social distancing measures and the imposition of lockdowns by governmental bodies. The virus is highly contiguous and has driven medical professionals to resort in using digital health software such as telehealth to successfully diagnose and treat patients. Owing to a large number of patients turning to digital health technologies, companies are planning to expand their capabilities to face the sudden increase of patients. For instance, in March 2020, MTBC Inc. launched a new telehealth solution called CareCloud Live that enables medical professionals to offer secure virtual sessions to an increasing number of patients seeking remote health care with very minimal disruption in the sessions.

However, factors such as lack of network infrastructure and lack of standard policies in developing nations are expected to hinder growth of the digital health market. Moreover, reluctance in using digital health across these nations may also act as a restraining factor to the market.

This market is distributed in five regions that include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa, and Latin America. Among these, North America is estimated to hold a bigger share of the global digital health market, owing to increased concern over self-care and adaption of modern technologies in the health care sectors of the region. Asia Pacific is projected to witness significant growth in the market, owing to the ease of disease treatment, the rise of the geriatric population, and the adaption of advanced digital health technologies in this region.

Competitive Analysis

Major players operating in the digital health market include Cerner Corporation., McKesson Corporation, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Honeywell International Inc., Cisco Systems, BioTelemetry, and Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc.

In April 2020 Philips launched a national digital health portal in the Netherlands to exchange the COVID-19 patients’ data. Likewise, in June 2019, Allscripts acquired ZappRx, a start-up in the digital health sector.