Health and wellness devices are largely untapped and can be a burgeoning opportunity for healthcare, beauty, and technology manufacturers, finds Kline & Company’s new Health and Wellness Devices report. One of the trends driving the strong growth in this market is that consumers are looking to build healthier lifestyles in order to improve their quality of life and reduce medical costs. Health-conscious consumers are also slowly shifting their focus to home care using devices such as blood glucose and pressure monitors, heart rate monitors, pedometers, teeth whitening devices, etc.
New technologies are expected to be an additional opportunity for health and wellness devices as with improved technologies for better home usability devices will gain better demand from consumers looking for accurate information. Some of the key technologies being integrated into these devices include:
- Bluetooth
- Zigbee
- Wired
- ANT
- Dect Ule
- 5 KHZ
- Other proprietary technologies
Kline projects that one of the opportunities for health and wellness devices will be the integration of wireless technologies, such as Bluetooth, which can be used by consumers to monitor their health at-home. Moreover, the penetration of consumers who use wireless devices is expected to grow from 4% in 2011 to 15% in 2016 due to the increasing demand for such devices and a growing consumer awareness.
The key driver for wireless technology is its ability to monitor an individual’s health using electronic devices, such as smartphones, which help collect and view the information. There are number of health and wellness applications for smartphones available for convenient download on the market. For example, some of the well-known applications include calorie calculators, exercise monitors, diet monitors, BMI calculators, and sport monitoring applications. Opportunities are also there for application developers, device manufacturers and technology providers that design at-home devices providing self-monitoring and health related information to physicians and other healthcare professionals, such as home health aides on the go. The availability of such devices is also increasing, which makes them more popular.
Providing consumers with products which are safe, accurate, affordable, and easy to use is one of the major challenges, however health monitoring devices are expected to post strong growth over the next five years with growth driven by positive demographics and a high incidence of health care concerns globally.
For more on health and fitness monitoring devices and cosmetic devices, see Health and Wellness Devices.
