Dive Brief:
- The global patient engagement solutions market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16.2% over the next five years, reaching $18.7 billion in 2022, according to MarketsandMarkets.
- Driving the growth are an aging population, the increasing burden of chronic diseases and a push to get patients to assume more responsibility for managing their care.
- Yet while patient engagement tools can enhance communication and help to improve outcomes while reducing costs, barriers such as patient data security and lack of interoperability persist and could prevent the market from reaching its full potential, the report says.
Dive Insight:
Patient engagement is a hot topic these days. During HIMSS17, a number of surveys made the rounds showing patients are using technology to engage with their health, though providers could do more to support the effort.
In the first half of 2017, digital health funding hit a record-breaking $3.5 billion on 188 deals, according to Rock Health. Patient engagement was one of the top categories, along with consumer health information, EHR/clinical workflow and analytics and big data.
As organizations continue the move to value-based care, some hospitals and health systems are adding chief experience officers to the C-suite. In 2016, 44% of healthcare organizations reported having a CXO and 39% of those reported directly to the president or CEO, according to a Vocera Communications survey.
Part of the CXO’s role is seeing how technology can aid in the context of patients’ lives. “Technology is bringing about a fundamental shift in the way in which we think about experience overall — whether through virtual visits and telemedicine, access to records, text message reminders, video discharge, etc.,” Stacy Palmer, senior vice president at The Beryl Institute, told Healthcare Dive earlier this year.
The largest share of the patient engagement solutions market is in software, although the services component is expected to have the highest CAGR during the forecast period, MarketsandMarkets says. Cloud-base solutions are also expected to outpace on-premise tools in the coming years as organizations move to more accessible modes of storage.
In terms of application, health management is projected for the largest share and highest CAGR. Other major sectors include social and behavioral management, home health management and financial health.
All but one of the major players are U.S. companies: McKesson, Allscripts, IBM, athenahealth and Cerner. The exception is Orion Health in New Zealand.