The market for mHealth app services will reach $26 billion by 2017

mHealth services start to leverage apps to become commercially successful.

Although the potential benefits of mHealth solutions have been widely discussed for over a decade, until recently the market never emerged from the trial phase.   Mobile application developers have begun to enable the mHealth industry to successfully monetize their services. The market for mHealth services has now entered the commercialization phase and will reach $ 26 billion globally by 2017.

This is one of the findings of our 3rd “Global Mobile Health Market Report 2013-2017”   published in March 2013.

Finally there is evidence that the long-expected mobile revolution in healthcare is set to happen. Both healthcare providers and consumers are embracing smartphones as a means to improving healthcare.

Top mHealth publishers manage to generate more than 3 million free and 300.000 paid downloads in the USA on the iOS platform. The reach on other platforms and in other countries differ at lot but show also the increase of business potential for mHealth apps.

Chart for blog

Not only are consumers taking advantage of smartphones to manage and improve their own health, but also healthcare profseeionals. A significant number (15%) of mHealth applications is primarily designed for healthcare professionals. These include CME (Continued Medical Education), remote monitoring and healthcare management applications.

Currently there are 97,000 mHealth applications in major app stores, 42% of them adhering to the paid business model.  With more and more traditional healthcare providers joining the mobile applications market, the business models will broaden to include healthcare services, sensor, advertising and drug sales revenues.

With the growing sophistication level of mHealth applications, only 9% of the total market revenue in the next 5 years will come from application download revenue. 84% of total mHealth application market revenue will come from related services and products such as sensors.

The “Global Mobile Health Market Report 2013-2017” by research2guidance is a business guide for traditional healthcare companies, mHealth specialists as well as for mobile operators wishing to successfully engage into the new mHealth market.

As usual comments are highly welcome.

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