From Digital Health to Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality and IoT

The mHealth Economics Program 2017 consists of a free report that focuses on unveiling the conditions of the current market and the future trends in digital health worldwide. The results of the research are based on the responses of more than 2,400 application developers and health professionals from 91 different countries. This year the Fundació Tic Salut Social has participated in this initiative, as it has done in previous editions.

The report is a source of reference data for all parties involved in digital health.
Most digital healthcare professionals come from Europe (47%), the USA (36%) and Asia (11%), followed by a small part of South America and Africa.
Global participation is concentrated in North America (USA and Canada) and in Europe (Germany and the United Kingdom).

Interest in "Digital Health" in the industrial sector is declining, but the health sector is growing. Digital health searches have made way for Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality and the Internet of Things.
The industry professionals have adopted new technologies, new business models and new work flows.

The report states:

• In 2017 there are 325,000 health applications (of health, physical condition and medical applications) available on the official markets.
• Of the total of 325,000 → 78,000 are new applications added to the main apps stores in the last year.
• Android has overtaken Apple in the number of health applications available. In comparison, Android has a growth rate of 50% between 2016 and 2017, and iOs of 20% in the last year.
• More than 84,000 medical application publishers are developing apps for the health and wellness market. In the last year, the number of application publishers increased by 45%.
• Estimate of 3.7 billion health applications downloaded in 2017. An increase of 16% compared to the previous year 2016, in which growth was 7%.
• 53% of digital health professionals expect health insurance to be the distribution channel with the best market potential in the future.
• Another determining factor for the growth of the digital health market is the growth of start-up companies and emerging companies fuelled by investments in the initial phase of accelerators.
• An important limitation for the digital health market is its complex and strict rules. This is a cause of slow development in digital health.

·         Regarding regulations, there are signs of imminent change, since the FDA in its Digital Health Innovation Plan will give a new approach to this issue: instead of approving individual digital products, whole companies and digital products launched by these companies will be certified; therefore they should not have to go through a regulatory process for each of their product versions.

Regarding regulations, there are signs of imminent change, since the FDA in its Digital Health Innovation Plan will give a new approach to this issue: instead of approving individual digital products, whole companies and digital products launched by these companies will be certified; therefore they should not have to go through a regulatory process for each of their product versions.

This development is still very recent, but it seems that the FDA is initiating a paradigm shift in the regulation of digital health solutions. This could be an example to be followed by other countries.