Virtual Care Industry Report 2021 - COVID-19 Pandemic Ignites Enthusiasm for Virtual Care

Competitors’ Growth Strategies will Shape the Way the Market Opportunity Crystallizes

There is no one definition for virtual care, but the analyst defines it in this research as a technical platform that maintains an interactive connectivity between patients, providers, and payers where various processes and services may be scheduled, accessed, monitored, and entered into the medical record without the need for manual calls or paper-based actions initiated by the stakeholders.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the dynamics of healthcare. Requirements to ensure social distancing have transformed virtual care from an important innovation to a must-have model. Although some organizations consider virtual care to be a component of telehealth, the analyst concludes that virtual care includes telehealth along with various workflow and clinical processes that are vital but often slowed down by inefficient technology and archaic communications systems.

The analyst believes that a market-based definition of virtual must reflect the activities of the companies involved. As a result, this report focuses on a virtual care market that includes the following segments: telehealth, telemedicine, clinical processes, and operational processes. The virtual care market includes companies that supply platforms, software, devices, services, advisory services, and analytics.

This report reviews the important drivers that are propelling virtual care, and the challenges that must be conquered for virtual care to achieve its enormous potential. This includes the ever-present concerns about privacy and security. The study presents an over view of notable companies in the virtual care space and reviews the types of products and services that comprise virtual visits, remote patient monitoring, virtual care, data gathering, data management, and messaging.

Medical devices and equipment currently account for 48% of the virtual care market. Providers of telehealth services and telemedicine solutions who combine service offerings, platforms, software, and other revenue-generating equipment; electronic health record providers; and virtual care specialists also have a foothold. Many early-phase companies are focused on gathering investors or becoming an acquisition target for larger companies seeking to add to their reach in the virtual care landscape. Information and communication technology companies are also targeting this space.