Health information technology is an “attractive” opportunity for U.S. companies looking for increased exports globally, according to the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration.
A new report from ITA finds that HIT “has the opportunity to dramatically influence delivery, efficiency, and cost for healthcare markets worldwide.” The top 10 projected markets for HIT exports over the next three years are:Japan, Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Austria, and South Korea.
Japan holds the top position among the 80 countries ranked by ITA for a number of reasons: it has the third highest GDP level globally (behind only the United States and China); a large HIT market size (exceeding $1 billion); the oldest-skewing population distribution; a high concentration of population clustered in urban areas; a tech-friendly society; and very good HIT infrastructure. “All of these factors indicate that Health IT already has a good foundation in Japan, with the potential for more growth,” concludes the report.
For a wide variety of U.S. companies, export opportunities exist in such HIT subsectors as health services (hospitals, treatment protocols, clinical trials, administration of claims and supplies), data-related services and products (storage, analytics), information and communications technologyproducts (routers, computers, tablets, mobile phones), medical devices (data and images gathered and stored by products such as magnetic resonance imagery machines and computed tomography scanners), and software (electronic health records, clinical decision software).
However, EHR markets are not discussed at length in the report, which is primarily focused on the mobile health and telehealth subsectors (including remote monitoring, outpatient care, home care, and self-care).
“Mobile health and telehealth are the focus of this report because they have gained an increasing foothold internationally and are predicted to grow substantially in market size and importance in the near future,” states ITA. “In contrast, more sophisticated technologies, such as EHRs, typically require more time to implement, and demand resources often unavailable in less developed countries. Since mobile phones and Internet-based technologies are widely available, the mobile health and telehealth subsectors of Health IT present sizable opportunities for business on a global scale.”
Date: July 21, 2015