Qualcomm (QCOM), the mobile-phone chipmaker, and AT&T (T), the largest U.S. phone company, are angling for a piece of the emerging market for wireless devices used in providing health-related services to consumers on the go and at home.
U.S. sales of related wireless gadgets, applications, and services for consumers are projected to double to $600 million this year and may more than double again, to $1.3 billion, in 2011, according to consulting firm Parks Associates in Dallas. Growth potential for the so-called m-health market is attracting growing interest from other tech industry giants, including Intel (), IBM () and Sprint Nextel (). "We meet with one medical device company a day," says Don Jones, a vice-president at Qualcomm, which is pushing the adoption of products such as electronic band-aids—gadgets that attach to the body and gather a patient's vital signs and other information. "This business will be very large," Jones says. Qualcomm makes chips designed to power the devices.
Best Buy (BBY), the leading U.S. consumer electronics retailer, is also jumping in. Following months of testing, the company will soon begin selling wireless-enabled health and fitness devices in more than half of its 1,089 U.S. stores, Kurt Hulander, a Best Buy senior director, says in an interview. "It's a potential growth area for us," Hulander says. The retailer already offers treadmills and regular blood-pressure monitors online. While its product lineup hasn't been finalized, Best Buy may carry blood-pressure monitors, pedometers, and fitness watches that wirelessly transmit readings taken at home to a website such as Microsoft's (MSFT) HealthVault, which stores electronic health records that can be shared with a physician, Hulander says. "A lot of things traditionally done in the doctor's office might soon be done at home," he says.
At-home care is surging as the U.S. population ages and governments and businesses seek ways to control rising costs. Health care's share of gross domestic product climbed to 16.2 percent in 2007, from 7.2 percent in 1970, according to a March 2009 report from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The costs will continue to rise as the number of people 65 and over climbs to 71 million in 2030, from 40 million last year, according to the Administration on Aging, a part of the U.S. Health and Human Services Dept.
One way to slash expenses is to deploy improved monitoring to reduce emergency room and hospital visits, particularly by people with chronic illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes. To that end, Intel and General Electric (GE), the world's biggest maker of health-care imaging systems, formed a joint venture this month. The project will offer Intel's Health Guide, a combination of patient devices and doctors' technology that lets clinicians monitor patients and conduct video calls with them at home. The combined company will develop and introduce at-home health products more quickly than Intel and GE could do on their own, said Louis Burns, a vice-president at Intel, during an Aug. 2 Webcast on the merger. "We might as well go a lot faster," he says.
Post a comment about this story in Reader Discussion…
Track and share business topics across the Web.
RSS Feed: Most Read Stories
RSS Feed: Most E-mailed Stories
RSS Feed: Most Discussed Stories
About Advertising EDGE Programs Reprints Terms of Use Disclaimer Privacy Notice Ethics Code Contact Us Site Map
©2010 Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved.
Read Full Article »