ABI Research: Health Care Wi-Fi Market Experiences 60% Growth

The uptake of Wi-Fi within health care has grown at more than 60 percent over the past 12 months in both wireless local area network and Wi-Fi Real-Time Locations Systems (RTLS) deployments, and high double-digit growth is expected to continue for at least the medium term.


Other wireless technologies being adopted and deployed in health care including cellular M2M and wearable wireless sensors have also seen significant growth over the past 12 months.


Wireless communications continue to be adopted in health care applications ranging from Wi-Fi networks to wearable sensors that wirelessly transmit a patient's condition to monitoring applications.


"Wi-Fi adoption has helped overcome initial concerns about complexity and reliability of wireless within health care," said ABI Research Principal Analyst Jonathan Collins. "The growing number of wireless technologies and wireless applications being developed, piloted and deployed within health care further underline the level of interest in using wireless to improve the flexibility and efficiency of health care services around the world."


The technologies tracked by ABI's wireless health care research service include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, low-energy Bluetooth, ZigBee, 802.15.4 and proprietary low power RF offerings across applications such as WLAN, personal monitoring, disease management, assisted living and telepresence.


The market trends for these technologies are documented in "Wireless Health care and Fitness Market Data," a database which tracks adoption of remote patient monitoring, telehealth and telepresence, as well as "body area networks," voice-over-Wi-Fi and chronic disease management.