Courtesy of Laurie Orlov

Telehealth - Health Delivery Feature not a Market

Telehealth will become a feature of healthcare delivery, not a market. Analyst firms have to pick a date for ending forecast sizing models. So let’s right away toss out as totally unconvincing any forecasts that specify 2015. Why? For one thing, that it is only three years away and we know that this year is a year of experimentation. This is a year of grants, pilot projects, more startups, more demos, free mobile apps, but very little broad-based commitment within non-vertically integrated health delivery processes that span hospital-rehab-home-family clinician and back. In other words, lots of talk but not much action. But just as a blood pressure cuff is a staple of diagnostics, so too will all of the sub-categories of telehealth become the tools of healthcare delivery and no longer remarkable as a market. This will follow the way the healthcare market does not report its spending on other tools (like chairs, bandages, or telephones). How will we know?

We will know because the cost growth rate of providing healthcare will have slowed significantly. Because the barriers of resistance from fixed infrastructure hospitals and threatened doctors will be overcome by appropriate incentives, facility consolidation and the ability to better calibrate patient care to need. Because the technology will have become tiny, cheap, and wireless, and because the server side applications and data analysis services and processes will be robust, consolidated, and less like the current tin can era of data transfer that passes for telehealth across the value chain.

A version of this article first appeared on Laurie Orlov's blog Technology Watch published 9/22/11