Richer, sicker seniors to drive medical wearables market growth

The medical wearable devices market is expected to grow over 16% by 2023 thanks to seniors with more money to spend on technology to ease their chronic pain and diabetes.

MedGadget reports that the worldwide medical wearables market is expected to increase from $2.73 billion in 2014 to $10.7 billion by 2023, amounting to a compound annual growth rate of 16.4% between 2015 and 2023.

As populations of seniors are growing worldwide, so grows market for those using wearablesto manage such ailments as diabetes and chronic pain. And with wealth concentrating among the aging populations in many countries, medical wearables will enjoy a more affluent customer base in the medium term.

However, in the near term medical wearables will face challenges in widespread adoption by seniors because of their high cost and the lack of insurance reimbursement policies.

Yet as medical wearables become more user-friendly, seniors worldwide will increasingly adopt medical wearables to track and manage their health conditions.

Key players in the medical wearables market include: Fitbit, Koninklijke Philips, Polar Electro, OMRON, Cleveland Medical Devices and Medtronic.

North America dominating medical wearables market today

Geographically, North America dominated the medical wearables market in 2014 thanks to increased health and fitness awareness and the role innovative connected devices play in that realm. The fitness and sports segment is expected to continue to dominate medical wearable use in both North America and globally over the next few years.

But further in the future the Asia Pacific region will emerge as a major driver of medical wearables, as massive diabetic populations in India and China turn to technology to manage their health conditions. The rising per capita wealth of the emerging middle class in Asia will allow those populations to buy more expensive technology.

As well, hospitals and healthcare centers will increasingly adopt more diagnostic and therapeutic wearable devices for such uses as neuromonitoring, tracking vital signs and fetal monitoring. And as the new medical wearables are far less cumbersome and more versatile than existing equipment, connected devices will steadily replace the bigger medical devices currently in use over time.