The Global Telemedicine market is poised to grow at a CAGR of 14.3% over the next six years, reaching USD36.3 billion in 2020 from USD14.3 billion in 2013. These figures were recently published by Transperancy Market Research, a market intelligence company in their "Telemedicine Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 - 2020". Transperancy Market Research cited the Health Care Cost Institute's (HCCI) report for U.S in 2011, which said that outpatient growth had reduced from 8% (2009-2010) to 6.8% in 2011 despite the increase in per capita spending on healthcare of 4.6% from 2010. The figures allude to prefences among patients to seek telemedicine services, an option that offers enhanced safety, convenience and reduced risks that come from hospitalization.
In its study, Transperancy Market Research finds that in terms of service, tele-consultation showed the highest market revenue in 2013 with medical consultation via video conferencing and mobile phones being the most favored forms of consultation. This is followed by tele-monitoring services, a segment that exhibited the highest growth rate at a CAGR of over 15%, says Transperancy Market Research. The rise in diseases such as diabetes and the increase in the number of disability patients is driving the need for remote monitoring and this coupled with the continuous development of M2M and Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies and solutions for healtcare, especially on cloud-based platforms, provides healtcare providers the ease and convenience of tracking patients and ensuring they are provided real-time care. Apart from tele-consultation and tele-monitoring, other tele-medcine services include tele-education, tele-care, tele-training and tele-surgery.
Although at present North America leads the telemedcine space with the highest implementation, the Asia Pacific region is growing at a CAGR of more than 16% on the back of a high demand for telemedcine services and will be a major market for this segment. Transperancy also listed the following players as the largest players in the segment - CISCO Systems Inc., AMD Global Telemedicine Inc., Polycom Corp. and McKesson Corporation.