Courtesy of Laurie Orlov

by Laurie Orlov

Analyst firms have re-discovered telehealth - and it’s big, big, big! So trumpets Information Week’s coverage of a new study from market researcher InMedica. They size the global market for telehealth at $6.28 billion by 2020 that is up from its current cited size of shipments at $163 million in 2010. This must indicate that we have reached a tipping point note worthy to marketers so telehealth is in their line of sight. It is no wonder with so many other markets being driven down by seized-up consumer spending. Most are tepid or shrinking. And it is certainly about time for the telehealth market to grow after languishing for years, if not decades, and despite the Veteran Administration validation and rollout. There are numerous reports that have verified telehealth's effectiveness at keeping patients out of the hospital. Hmm, maybe the tipping point is sooner. BCC Research, another analyst group already valued the ‘telehome’ subset of telemedicine at $2.9 billion in 2010, rising to $7.9 billion by 2015.

Vaguely defined markets beget large and murky forecasts. The last time a market was this murky happened when another anticipated and vague boom hit; eCommerce in the late 90’s. The telehealth market (and its e, m, and c brethren) is reminiscent of those days when analysts threw around mind-boggling market predictions. Forecasts were driven from a few baseline published revenue numbers, tossed with some future adoption assumptions, married to a formula for growth over time and voilà! A forecast. We were coy and unclear about whether we were talking about a market size that might have been the sum of its parts (B2B plus B2C at $6.8 trillion by 2004 from an article dated 2001), and so the same dollar could have been counted multiple times or not. Further, the first days of ‘eCommerce’ were more similar to putting two tin cans together than much ‘e’. Industry veterans will remember the days of printing out EDI transaction, walking over and hand-entering an order on another terminal. And last, but not least, in 2011 does an eCommerce market really exist? Or is eCommerce capability simply a feature of being able to participate in any market?

Telehealth has a similar optimistic vagueness that invites variable predictions. We have a market that uses the same term to describe apps on cell phones used by doctors (see Information week sidebar), apps on cell phones used by patients, and biometric devices (blood pressure cuffs etc.) to enable self-care at home along with remotely managed surgeries, medication dispensing devices, point of care testing, etc. and the old stalwart (the original telehealth) chronic disease monitoring of patients discharged from the hospital with weight scales, blood pressure cuffs and the rest, plus a telehealth nurse to check on them. So at this time, let us all calm ourselves and remember the starting shipment number from InMedica -- $163 million in 2010 -- and take forecasts with the grain of salt they deserve.Let us build new business based on the most conservative forecast.