Vendors Favour Platform Monitoring as Novel Service Models Disrupt APAC Home Health Monitoring Market

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The escalating demand for home monitoring products such as remote patient monitoring (RPM) and mobile health (mHealth) has thrown the spotlight on the scarcity of sustainable business models. This issue has gained significance with vendors increasingly establishing partnerships and joint ventures with telcos, healthcare providers, insurance companies, governments and other stakeholders. The inherent risks in such relations can be mitigated by choosing a business model that can best tap the monetization opportunities.

“Asia-Pacific is moving towards a platform monitoring model for chronic disease management, wherein devices will be provided for free and the revenue will be generated from monitoring services and data insights,” said Frost & Sullivan Transformational Health Industry Analyst Shalani Andria. “Despite the slow start to the market, savvy vendors are investing early as they detect potential for exponential growth once a funding model is established.”

APAC Home Health Monitoring Market, Forecast for 2020, part of Frost & Sullivan’s Connected Health Growth Partnership Subscription, finds that payers such as insurance companies will reimburse telehealth or offer it for free to policy holders to reduce hospital admission claims. Other topics covered by the subscription include health IT, 3D printing, video telemedicine, care assistance and automation robots, implantable electronics, and eHealth.

Asia-Pacific presents significant opportunities, but it daunts vendors with the heterogeneity in regulations for remote monitoring and data sharing in individual countries, as well as a lack of clarity on government and infrastructure support. Once these hurdles are crossed, vendors can develop a sustainable revenue-generation ecosystem and deliver end-to-end home monitoring support.

The demand hotspots are India, China and Japan, which are also emerging as hubs of business model innovation. Some reasons for their success include:

The Indian government’s initiatives to improve access to technology across the continuum of care and its “open-door” policy towards international vendors.

China’s large size and the expanding middle class with increased spending power. There are also international-local joint ventures in home. care services due to the government’s privatization of home care services

Japan’s growing elderly population and high rate of technology adoption.

“Vendors are already incorporating Big Data, analytics and intelligence tools in home monitoring solutions,” noted Andria. “They need to realize that the humanization of home monitoring solutions will continue to be an important factor in Asia-Pacific, and will have to evolve from being tech companies to being clinical service providers.”

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