Machine-to-machine in the healthcare sector represents a significant commercial opportunity for a wide range of companies and will be one of the major drivers of machine-to-machine communication.
“The market for M2M healthcare applications will be huge, EUR69 billion in 2020. We expect that EUR3.1 billion of this revenue will go to mobile network operators for provision of data carriage services, but the rest is up for grabs. Telecoms operators, equipment vendors and various service providers will all want a slice of the pie, and who gets what all comes down to business models”, says Jim Morrish, Director.
Machina Research’s Connected Intelligence report Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Communication in Healthcare 2010-2020” forecasts that:
- The installed base of M2M connected devices within the sector will exceed 774 million by 2020. North America will be the largest region for the duration of the forecast, with a share of worldwide connected medical devices peaking at 54% and falling back to 42% by the end of the forecast period, as growth in Europe accelerates.
- Total traffic generated by M2M applications in the healthcare sector (and carried over wide area networks) will approach 78 petabytes by 2020, a CAGR of 75% from 2010’s figure of 283 terabytes. The proportion of such traffic carried over mobile networks will remain relatively high throughout the forecast period, falling from 72% in 2010 to 43% in 2020. Total mobile network traffic generated by M2M solutions in the healthcare sector will exceed 33 petabytes by 2020, a CAGR of 66%.
- Overall, global network traffic revenues for mobile operators can be expected to exceed EUR3.1 billion in 2020. Revenue for M2M connected healthcare applications will total EUR 69 billion in 2020. The majority of M2M connected healthcare devices will be accounted for by consumer-oriented applications. However, the majority of revenues will be accounted for by the non-consumer segment, due to the significantly higher average capital cost of such devices: the bulk of this revenue will only be addressable by established medical equipment manufacturers (although related revenues opportunities will be available for systems integrators).
