By 2013, the shipments of home-use telehealth devices, such as digital blood-glucose meters and pulse oximeters, will top 2 million, according to a new report from InMedica, the medical research division of IMS Research.

As the use of telehealth grows, more people will have monitoring devices in their homes, the report asserts.
Consumer telehealth will be an extension of the current home-use medical device market, with manufacturers offering additional Internet-based services to people that purchase their monitors, said market research analyst Neha Khandelwal.

These services are expected to include simple analysis of readings and some level of feedback that may include dietary and nutritional advice.  There are also a host of specialist software applications of varying health management tools also available.

"These services are likely to be subscription based and will coincide with the popularity of Internet health products such as Google Health or Microsoft's Health Vault," Khandelwal said. "The Continua Health Alliance aims to make all home-use medical devices with telehealth features interoperable; so it is also likely that consumer devices will be able to work with innovative new health records."

InMedica expects professional and consumer telehealth to develop in partnership with each other. In fact, consumer-led telehealth services could prove to be the disruptive influence required for professional care authorities to drive telehealth forward, according to Khandelwal.

Among InMedica's key findings are:

• Today telehealth is mainly used for the management of chronic diseases, such as COPD, CHF, hypertension and diabetes. Despite being around for a number of years, home telehealth has not yet evolved into a mainstream application.
• On the whole, the United States has shown the most development, with a few instances of mainstream services. Telehealth implementation by the Veterans Association is the single largest to date, with more than 30,000 subscribers.
• While the United States has been leading the adoption of telehealth so far, some European countries such as the UK, Netherlands, Denmark and Germany have also witnessed implementation of telehealth projects of varying scope and scale. A second market for telehealth that is also gaining traction includes people who are more generally concerned or worried about their state of health, who may not necessarily be diagnosed with a condition.
• In 2009, nearly 50,000 blood-pressure monitors were used in telehealth applications. Shipments are forecast to increase to more than half a million in 2013. Ageing world populations and unhealthy modern lifestyles are significantly increasing the prevalence of hypertension. It is also becoming an increasingly worrying cardiovascular risk factor. Blood-pressure monitors are being increasingly integrated as a part of telehealth packages.
• Diabetes is another common chronic condition to be monitored using telehealth. Though the number of blood-glucose monitors used in telehealth applications was low in 2009, shipments are forecast to grow to around 300,000 in 2013.