COVID-19 Helps Electronic Skin Patches Market to $10bn in 2021: IDTechEx
01 July 2021: IDTechEx’s latest report on Electronic Skin Patches. The report, titled “Electronic Skin Patches 2021-2031”, covers the market, technology, and players in this unique product sector, and predicts that the sector will be worth $10bn in annual revenue in 2021. The report captures the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, covering the impact for each sector throughout 2020 and 2021.
Having covered the subject over the last decade as part of wider research efforts in wearables and medical devices, this report looks chapter by chapter at each of the key market sectors involved. Diabetes management is the largest and most successful sector, predominantly with CGM but also increasing adoption of patch pumps for insulin delivery and moves towards closed-loop systems. Cardiovascular monitoring is the other sector generating revenue in the billions of dollars each year but is far more fragmented in terms of players, product trends, and geographies. These skin patch cardiovascular monitors are increasingly at the center of an expansion to a more general approach to patient monitoring, both for hospital inpatients and beyond into various outpatient applications.
On the impact of COVID-19, James Hayward, Principal Analyst at IDTechEx and lead author of the report, said “Rather than any lasting negative impact as seen elsewhere, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an acceleration in many of the key trends underpinning the development of this market. Wider adoption of telehealth, additional drivers for remote patient monitoring, and larger-scale adoption of digital patient management solutions were all trends which we covered previously, but the acceleration in each has left us 2 years ahead of our original projections for their widespread adoption.”
Electronic skin patches as a product category is extremely diverse, meaning different drivers, regulatory situations, and underlying trends in many of the different markets where skin patches are relevant. For example, as more funding became available around pandemic response options, 2020 and 2021 also saw a significant revision of the reimbursement amounts awarded to mobile cardiac telemetry devices in the US, drastically altering the margins and outlook for certain product types. Such changes are discussed at length in the report, both in the general discussion and in relation to responses and impact on specific players. Each product sector has a drastically different set of drivers, competitive landscape and outlook, and skin patch-based options fit within each in a very unique way.
