Telecom Lead Asia: The size of the mHealth market is
likely to be $23 billion by 2017.
Telecom operators are developing ICT capabilities to
serve eHealth market, such as cloud-based medical records and imaging as well
as in the provision of health information exchanges.
The size of eHealth market will be up to $160 billion in
2015.
Orange, in association with GE, is integrating the
imaging needs of the most populous region in France, connecting more than 90
hospitals and 500 radiologists and covering a patient base of more than 12
million individuals.
AT&T signed large deals providing health information
exchange services to the Indiana Health Information Exchange, which includes
more than 80 facilities, 19,000 physicians and 10 million patients; as well as
in private sector Baylor Healthcare system in Texas.
“Over the past few years we’ve seen mobile operators
delivering end-to-end healthcare solutions which have typically been provided
by the traditional systems integrator but there is clear evidence supporting
operators’ emerging role in eHealth,” said Chris Locke, managing director,
GSMA Development Fund.
As mobile operators develop their capabilities to connect
people and businesses in increasingly more sophisticated ways, they will face a
number of challenges.
Operators will need to build on their brands in order to
differentiate themselves from existing ICT infrastructure providers; they will
need to demonstrate their ability to deliver as new implementations have large
financial and brand risks attached; and they will have to demonstrate the value
that they bring to the eHealth industry and end consumers in integrating the
solutions both inside and outside of hospitals and clinic settings.
As the mHealth industry continues to develop, there has
been no comprehensive cataloguing of global mHealth service deployment.
To address this, over the last nine months, GSMA has
tracked and analysed mHealth products and services, and has created the GSMA
mHealth Tracker.
