Remote Patient Monitoring: The Markets Near and Far

Remote patient monitoring technologies, have, for years held the promise that they would improve health care by providing physicians with data that would help them intervene and maintain the health of groups of patients who are otherwise prone to exacerbations of illness that land them in the hospital from time to time. In particular, health care constituencies have been looking to telemonitoring to solve problems of chronic illnesses. The premise is that the information gleaned from remote monitoring devices can help keep the chronically ill out of the most expensive care settings like the emergency room. But the remote patient management markets have been slow to materialize for several reasons, not the least of which is lack of reimbursement. For in chronic illnesses, remote patient monitoring technologies become tools of a disease management framework, with all of the uncertainties around the economics and business models of disease management.