Analysis and comparison of mobile medical market between China and the United States

1、 From the data extracted from China and the United States and the global trend, we can observe the recent development status of mobile health care and the arrival of new opportunities Since 2008, the number of mobile users has grown rapidly, and will maintain the growth trend for a long time in the future According to the 2013 mobile economy report released by GSMA, the number of mobile users increased from 2.3 billion in 2008 to 3.4 billion in 2013 and is expected to exceed 3.9 billion in 2017 (see Figure 1) Figure 1: the number of mobile users in the world, if measured by the number of mobile devices, will be even more amazing, because many people have more than one mobile phone, mobile phone or tablet According to the Cisco vision network index, the global data traffic of mobile communication will grow more than ten times between 2012 and 2017 Analysts also predict that the data traffic of mobile communication in China and the United States will increase significantly Mobile network has played a huge role in the global economy, especially in the growth of consumption Its development results far exceed expectations, which makes the industrial efficiency to be improved According to OECD data for developed countries from 1998 to 2010, every 10% increase in network penetration will lead to 0.035% economic growth In Chinese cities and towns, the influence of mobile network is even higher than that of ordinary network According to the research conducted by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) in June 2013, 78.9% of the network users in Chinese villages and towns rely on mobile phones to access the network, which is far higher than the proportion of using desktop computers (58.8%) and laptops (32.4%) to access the network In June 2013, 27.9% of China's Internet users (165 million people) lived in towns These data also indicate that there are still great opportunities for providing a wide range of services through the network 2、 The medical environment faced by China and the United States (1) medical costs continue to rise, both in China and the United States, medical costs are growing rapidly China's medical expenses accounted for 5.15% of GDP in 2011 China's annual medical spending between 2006 and 2011 increased from rmb0.98 trillion (US $0.16 trillion) in 2006 to rmb2.4 trillion (US $0.396 trillion) in 2011 (see Figure 2) Figure 2: China's annual average medical expenditure, 2006-2011 in the United States, the total expenditure of medical services in 2013 is about $2.9 trillion, and is expected to increase to about $4.8 trillion by 2021 (see Figure 3) The proportion of medical service expenditure to GDP is expected to increase from 16.2% in 2006 to 19.6% in 2021 Figure 3: average annual medical service expenditure in the United States, 2006-2011 (2) population aging China and the United States are facing population aging at the same time For China, 8% of the current population is over 65 years old (see Figure 4) For the United States, 40 million (12.9%) of the 310 million people are over 65 years old The U.S share is expected to rise to 20% as the baby boomers retire Figure 4: China's population proportion, 1982-2010 (3) affordability challenges although technology is developing in the medical industry, many people still can't afford the cost of personal medical care There is a lot of pressure on Chinese citizens to spend on health care (see Figure 5) Recently, the proportion of medical expenses borne by individuals varies from 35% to 50% Figure 5: China's medical expenditure, 2006-2010, the proportion of medical expenditure in family income in the United States is expected to increase day by day American scholars predict that by 2037, the average medical expenditure will exceed the median of family income (4) The gap between the rich and the poor is obvious Compared with the middle class or the rich, low-income Americans generally have less access to medical services About 95% of high-income Americans buy health insurance, while only 70% of low-income people (see Figure 6) Figure 6: the difference of the proportion of medical insurance among different income groups in the United States From 2006 to 2010, the coverage of medical insurance in China increased between 2009 and 2011 The government's intervention ensures the access rate of medical services, especially has a positive impact on the township areas The proportion of people with health insurance in China increased rapidly from 85% in 2009 to 95% in 2011 Through the new rural cooperative medical system, the Chinese government has increased the scope of medical security for rural residents (5) the challenges of incidence rate and mortality of chronic diseases, according to the Information Office of the State Council of People's Republic of China, doctors diagnose 260 million of chronic diseases and 85% of them die every year Among them, most of them are cancer (27.79%) cerebrovascular disease (20.22%) heart disease (21.3%) (see Table 1) Table 1: chronic diseases in China incidence rate chronic disease is also a major problem in the United States, chronic diseases account for 75% of total medical expenses, 11.3% of Americans suffer from heart disease, 6.4% suffer from coronary heart disease, 3.2% suffer from stroke, 2.6% have heart attack, 8% suffer from cancer, 21.9% suffer from arthritis, 8.6% suffer from diabetes Table 2: incidence rate of chronic diseases in the United States (6) chronic diseases consume high cost of manpower and financial resources Chronic disease treatment accounts for 70% of health care costs The World Health Organization predicts that from 2006 to 2015, Chinese people will spend 3910 billion yuan (US $558 billion) on heart disease, stroke and diabetes The high cost of chronic diseases will continue to increase According to the Family Planning Commission of the people's Republic of China, the total cost of health care in 2012 is 2891 billion yuan, an increase of 456.85 billion yuan over 2011 Despite the large medical costs, there is no significant improvement in the treatment of chronic diseases in China Chronic diseases will consume more resources in the future In the United States, some chronic treatments are more expensive than others Generally, the cost of cancer and heart disease treatment is gradually increasing, while that of asthma, diabetes and osteoarthritis is relatively stable (7) Cardiovascular disease is one of the biggest health challenges in two countries According to the Ministry of health, about 132 of the 10 million people died of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases Cardiovascular research and health research center shows that the incidence rate of cardiovascular diseases will increase rapidly in China The number of cardiovascular patients will increase by 0.5 times in China or 21 million 300 thousand in the next 20 years (see Figure 7) Cardiovascular disease brings huge family burden to patients According to the statistics of China in 2010, the cost of acute myocardial infarction is 4.287 billion yuan (US $702 million), the cost of intracranial hemorrhage is 12.35 billion yuan (US $2.01 billion), and the cost of cerebral infarction is 22.75 billion yuan (US $3.71 billion) Figure 7: the number of cardiovascular diseases in China (in thousands), 1980-2010 in the United States, the cost of heart disease treatment has increased significantly in the past decade, from 2000 to 2010, we see that the cost of heart disease treatment for inpatients has increased from $13433 to $20831, and the cost of emergency room treatment, prescription drugs and hospital outpatient treatment have similar increases 3、 The combination of mobile and medical development of mobile communication technology can promote the development of mobile medical through better access and push of medical services Mobile devices provide the possibility for the improvement of medical carrying capacity and the efficiency of medical service related subsidies At the same time, the mobile phone provides a suitable way for patients and doctors to send medication reminder and diagnosis information Finally, mobile medical protocol can promote the collection and analysis of health data and promote the development of the whole medical system Mobile health activities have been popularized all over the world A global survey conducted by the World Health Organization found that as many as 114 countries have actively established mobile medical systems The most common is to create a health call center to respond to patient consultation (38%), as shown in Figure 8, followed by setting up SMS service to set appointment reminder (25%), using telemedicine (18%), and accessing patient records（ 18%), measurement of treatment status (17%), improvement of health awareness (10%), monitoring of patients (8%), and medical support (6%) Figure 8 In the iimedia survey report of the countries that have established the mobile medical system, China's mobile medical application market is growing rapidly They estimate that the size of China's mobile medical market is 1.86 billion yuan, an increase of 17.7% over last year They also predict that China's mobile medical market will exceed 10 billion yuan by the end of 2017 (1) At the same time, the domestic wearable devices and remote monitoring iimedia also foresee the rapid growth of China's wearable medical device market According to the data, the wearable medical device market in China will reach 420 million yuan in 2012 and more than 5 billion yuan by 2017 (see Figure 9) Remote monitoring equipment is a part of the rapid development of mobile medical industry According to reports, the market size of China's medical monitoring service will reach US $1.2 billion in 2017, with more than 90% of its revenue coming from chronic disease solutions Figure 9 China's wearable mobile medical device market scale monitoring service will dominate the global mobile medical market By 2017, testing services will reach $15 billion (see Figure 10) Figure 10 Global mobile medical market opportunities by business classification in 2017 (2) the next two largest sub industries of China's remote diagnosis and remote treatment are diagnosis and treatment One growing area is video conferencing Video chat software such as FaceTime and Skype provides a simple and quick solution for the inconvenience of telemedicine service Video conference system can help people who live in underdeveloped or imperfect areas get low-cost, high-quality medical services Such a program can overcome the geographical gap between urban and rural areas and bring high-quality medical care to areas that may lack doctors or medical facilities The market of video conference system in China is increasing year by year In 2010, the market size of video conference was 6.63 billion yuan, up 28.24% compared with the previous year (3) Mobile medical usage in the United States mobile medical usage in the United States is growing 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