Type

Global market for healthcare

$ billion

Impediments

Positive trends

2003

2013

Responsive inks

0.08

1.50

Supermarkets usually shun TTIs because they “sow doubt” among customers.

Possible legislation eventually.

Increasing cost of litigation and higher standards demanded by consumers in safety and ease of use.

RFID inc systems

0.10

3.0

Affordability.

Decisions on who pays – supplier, service provider or end user.

Big push to use technology in hospitals to improve service and reduce cost.

New laws on tagging cattle and dogs.

20% of RFID tags do not replace anything : they make something new possible such as automatically preventing the disoriented patient from wandering into the street.

Cost of RFID tags and systems dropping rapidly.

Number of proven paybacks and case histories growing rapidly.

Other disposable electronics

0.001

6.2

Cost

Some technical challenges.

Premium pricing and increased sales of better products.

Eventually there may be laws on use-by-dates and drug compliance monitoring.

Greying of the population means that eg microprinted instructions and other information must be replaced and error prevention radically improved.

New thin film transistor circuits and electronic displays will be ten times cheaper and will be better than silicon chips environmentally.  For example, that could mean that transdermal patches are very widely used to deliver drugs at certain times or in response to monitored need could become everyday items.

Source IDTechEx