Page 18 - HME Business, January 2018

Sleep Strategy:
2018
Over the years, sleep providers have learned one thing about their marketplace: exibility is the key to smart strategy. They must be able to adapt to changes in care, technology, and above all, the funding environment if they want to remain viable, rele- vant sleep therapy businesses. They have to constantly keep an ear to the ground to discover what trends are on the horizon for the sleep marketplace, and adjust accordingly.
To help you stay on top of a constantly morphing sleep market, we’ve identi ed seven key technology, care and busi- ness considerations you should factor into your strategic plan- ning for 2018. Some you might have already handled, some you might know about, and some might be news to you, but all are pressing, pertinent issues that will impact providers to varying degrees during the months to come.
Connected Care
The numbers don’t lie: remote patient monitoring is abso- lutely fundamental to the continued success of sleep therapy providers. It is becoming a de facto requirement. The number of remotely monitored patients grew by 51 percent to 4.9 million during 2015, according to “mHealth and Home Monitoring,” a study from market researchers at Berg Insight that was released several months ago. (“mHealth” being Berg’s word for mobile health technology.) Looking ahead, the number of remotely monitored patients will grow at a
By David Kopf
compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48.9 percent to reach 36.1 million by 2020, according to the study.
Revenues for remote patient monitoring reached roughly $6.8 billion in 2015. That revenue includes revenues from medical monitoring devices, mobile health connectivity solu- tions, care delivery platforms and mobile healthcare programs. Berg reported it expects remote patient monitoring revenues to grow at a CAGR of 32.1 percent between 2015 and 2020, to eventually reach $27.4 billion.
And where the home medical equipment market is concerned, connected medical devices, such as sleep therapy equipment, accounted for a whopping 71 percent of total remote patient monitoring revenues in 2015, according to Berg. That said, revenues for mobile health connectivity solu- tions, care delivery platforms and mobile healthcare programs are growing at a faster rate and will account for 46.3 percent of total revenues in 2020, up from just 29 percent in 2015.
Berg’s report says that the sleep therapy segment of remote patient monitoring has been growing at the fastest rate of all, with the number of remotely monitored sleep therapy patients grew by 170 percent during 2015. Moreover the report has pegged sleep to outpace cardiac rhythm management (CRM) — traditionally been the largest segment of the remote monitoring market —
by about the time you are reading this. In fact, sleep equipment maker ResMed reported at the outset of 2017 that it had hit a landmark moment in monitoring sleep patients: 1 billion nights of
18 HMEBusiness | January 2018 | hme-business.com
Management Solutions | Technology | Products
Seven key trends sleep providers should consider for their businesses over the next 12 months.