Preventive Healthcare Emerging As Health Technology Sector
By Megan Williams, contributing writer
Every year, millions of people die from preventable diseases and conditions including diabetes, obesity, infectious disease, chronic respiratory disease, and cardiovascular disease. As technology becomes more fundamental to healthcare, preventive healthcare innovation (technologies used in measures adopted for disease prevention instead of treatment) are showing big predicted growth.
According to a Grand View Research report from Report Linker, the global preventive healthcare technologies and services market is projected to reach a size of $432.4 billion by 2024. This growth is predicted to be fueled by multiple forces.
Government Spending
In countries around the world, governments are spending more on promoting disease awareness and healthy practices including dietary changes, health checkups, and quitting alcohol and tobacco.
The Human Development Index (HDI) was introduced in 2010 and since has served as a source of motivation to countries around the world to improve their ratings. The index is calculated based on four major factors, one of which is life expectancy, a metric in which governments around the world have been investing to improve, partly through the use of preventive technologies.
Cost Effectiveness
In relation to traditional treatment procedures, preventive health measures represent a cost savings for both health service payers and publicly funded health systems. Things such as early diagnosis and disease prevention help to reduce the burden on inpatient and outpatient care systems, ambulatory services, as well as burdens in the areas of medication and rehab.
Self-Monitoring
The rise of self-monitoring technology, especially cholesterol measuring devices and blood-glucose monitoring devices, as well as other wearables, has opened up an entirely new dimension of preventive health.
Associated Technologies
The report emphasized the importance of the growth of advanced technology and an increase in the demand for more accurate screening methods. It additionally mentioned the growth of early detection and screening as the fastest during the forecasted period.
Regionally, North America dominated the preventive care space with 48 percent of the global market last year and it is expected to continue doing so through the forecast period.
Major players include McKesson Corporation; Scripto LLC, Omnicell, Inc., Healthways, Inc., Alere, Medtronic, GlaxoSmithKline plc, Pfizer, Inc., and Merck & Co, Inc.