SECTOR SERVICES
care management applications. Mobile network operators are starting
to launch m-health services, including in developing countries. South African operator MTN in January announced a partnership with local healthcare provider Sanlam Health to launch m-health appli- cations. Services will include providing community and clinical health data; delivery of healthcare information to practitioners and patients; real-time monitoring of patients; and provisioning of care. In Kenya, Safaricom and Telkom Kenya last month announced m-health consultation and diagnosis services, the latter in conjunction with Orange Healthcare marking its first m-health services in Africa. Yet it is clear that operators need to
ensure they are selling more than just connectivity to establish a viable business model, particularly when it comes to serv- ices such as m2m monitoring. “If you look at simply the [financial] value [for opera- tors] of the data sent out it is very, very low,” says Andre Malm, a senior analyst at Berg Insight. “You have to make tailored solutions, including cloud services.” Nevertheless, analyst companies widely
forecast significant potential opportuni- ties for operators. Juniper Research, for example, estimates revenues from remote patient monitoring using mobile networks will rise to almost US$1.9 billion globally by 2014 (see chart). Juniper says heart- based monitoring in the US will account for the bulk of early mobile monitoring. What’s more, governments need to
find new ways to distribute health serv- ices more cheaply if they are to cope with the financial pressure of providing care to citizens. Over half of the total adult population across the European Union is now overweight or obese, according to the OECD, leading to a rise in chronic illnesses such as diabetes; meanwhile life expectancy continues to rise. In 2008 EU countries spent, on average, 8.3% of their GDP on healthcare, up from 7.3% in 1998, according to the OECD. Governments in continental Europe are
taking a small-scale approach, evaluating trial services in individual hospitals and clinics. “Governments are looking at basic
18
Remote health monitoring $2,000
n Africa & Middle East n Rest of Asia Pacific n Indian Sub Continent n Far East & China n Eastern Europe n Western Europe n South America n North America
into a device—other than mobile phones and laptops—according to Berg Insight. “The potential is several tens [of millions] or even hundreds of millions over the next 10–15 years,” says Malm. Fibre infrastructure will also boost
services. Last month Verizon said it will provide home health monitoring over its FiOS fibre network, in conjunction with Healthsense, a provider of WiFi-based home health monitoring systems. However, there are still considerable
$0 2009 2014 Source: Juniper Research
requirements that might end up in m-health,” says Rajagopal at Frost & Sullivan. “Telcos’ main aim [today] is to come up with services for hospitals so that when there are country-wide initiatives… they can say ‘we’ll be able to do it’.” Not only are smaller projects easier to
manage and less likely to draw political fire, but they can also provide simple snapshots of potential return on invest- ment. In the UK, O2 Health took part in a trial of midwives who used digital pens to write and transfer notes directly to a hospital database when conducting home visits. The time saved by reducing paper- work and administration resulted in a saving of £250,000 across 100 midwives, after taking into account the cost of deploying the service, says Nurcombe. On a national scale the savings would be closer to £50 million, he believes. Nevertheless, operators are cautious
about evaluating when new monitoring and telemedicine services may take off. “The market for providing…intra- and inter-hospital applications and networks is fairly mature, [but] telemedicine is less mature,” says Orange’s Brillouet. “Ten years from now there will be a palette of services available from home.” “It’s too early to prove the return on
investment of chronic disease manage- ment,” admits Nurcombe, who expects “slow, sensible solid growth” from the sector. For example, at the end of 2010 there were approximately 200,000 patients in North America and Europe being monitored using an m2m SIM integrated
business and technical challenges to over- come. Operators, health service providers and device manufacturers all need to ensure they develop interoperable plat- forms, points out Brillouet at Orange. “There are [healthcare actors] who are not very technophile and governments that want to go very quickly,” she contin- ues. “You have to bring all that together. Today there are many small pieces in place, but they are a bit scattered. In the next one to three years all the [seemingly] non-revolutionary…[elements] will start coming together.” Frost & Sullivan says the UK has been
the pioneer in introducing e-healthcare initiatives among Western European countries, but the experience there could also deter governments from introducing full-scale implementations. The UK’s healthcare ICT upgrade, begun in 2002, set out to link doctors and hospitals and provide healthcare professionals with access to a central database of patient care records, but the project—underpinned by BT—went significantly over budget. Indeed the cost and complexity of the
UK’s overhaul of its health service infra- structure illustrated the pitfalls of not properly addressing how ICT usage affects working practices and care. “Setting up the database and infrastructure [in the UK] the [human] training part was lost,” says Rajagopal. “BT never really trans- ferred the benefits of e-health.” In addition, she says, “there were a lot of concerns that medical records were not secure.” Malm at Berg Insight adds: “Medical
institutions don’t have the resources to collect information on a real-time basis and medical services don’t know how to deal with the information.” n
www.totaltele.com May 2011
Service revenues (US$ millions)
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