The market for wireless ehealth devices should be exceptionally bouyant. Health providers throughout the industrialised world are coming to realise that they must overhaul their health services if they are to cope with the rising number of young people who are suffering from lifestyle related diseases, such as diabetes, and the growing number of older people who require medical care during their retirement.
The UK government is already modernising the healthcare sector and plans to spend over £6 billion over the next decade to provide the National Health Service (NHS) with the sort of IT infrastructure that organisations within the financial services and manufacturing sector have been using for the past two decades. For IT companies selling into the UK healthcare sector this should be good news. However, for many, the short-term impact of the National Program for Information Technology (NPfIT) has been negative. As well, the NPfIT is being put in place at a time when both the UK government and the EU commission are changing the way ehealth projects are funded.
eHealth vendors from around the world have been targeting the UK market in the hope of being included in the NPfIT. Some have been lucky but many have not. However companies that have given up may have done so in haste. There are still gaps in the ehealth market for companies that can correctly identify opportunities and are willing to reposition themselves.
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