The Health Care M&A Monthly: Mobile Health Is App-Happy –

mHealth Is Hot, But What Is It Worth?
Mobile health is growing by leaps and bounds—at least, the estimates and projections of its worth are. The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions put the global mHealth market at $1.2 billion in 2011, and projected it would reach $11.8 billion by 2018, with a compound annual growth rate of 39%. In January 2013, Transparency Market Research published its projection of a lower but equivalent $10.2 billion global market in 2018. And in March, German research firm research2guidance predicted mobile health applications (apps) alone would constitute a $26 billion market in less time, in 2017.
But there’s still a Wild West feel to this market, as venture capital firms pour millions of dollars into mobile health startups, the consumer and trade press tease readers with speculation on physicians prescribing apps instead of drugs, and the U.S. House of Representatives held three days of hearings last month to assess whether smartphones, tablets and mHealth apps should be regulated as medical devices by the Food and Drug Administration. The only conclusion reached so far is that the FDA will regulate medical devices connected to smartphones and tablets, but not consumers’ smartphones that…….Want to read more? Click here for a free trial to The Health Care M&A Information Source and download the current issue today