Market Overview

Personal Health Record or PHR is defined as “a system for a person to collect, save and utilize his/her own health information, aiming to maintain or improve her/his own living qualities.” The terminus for PHR is to consolidate the management of a person's health records throughout his/her life, including the health, medical and long-term care records. As for PHR for individuals, simple versions offered free of charge as a smartphone application are widespread. There also are some of paid PHR, such as those services provided by specialists, those that provide customized information, or those packaged ones that contain multiple healthcare services.

In recent years, there observed are those PHR service providers for individuals pressing ahead with clinical research for the purpose to develop business of medicine by co-studying with various universities and co-developing therapeutic apps. Those cases of PHR services provided seamlessly through a smartphone from the healthcare domain to the medical domain are likely to keep on expanding.

Noteworthy Topics

Attention to New Business Development at Uninsured (Paid) Rehabilitation Service Providers through Collaboration

Against a backdrop of aging society, rehabilitation aiming at early recovery (to the society) from various diseases has been in the limelight. While there is rehabilitation covered by health insurance or by long-term care insurance, it has the challenges in quality and quantity, as it is capped by the number of days calculated by the type of disorder. So come those businesses offering paid (uninsured) rehabilitation services.

Such services are mainly offered to individuals, but those for corporations have become brisk in recent years. From before, the service providers of paid rehabilitation have collaborated with other companies to offer the services to other enterprises, and such a tendency has accelerated as the corona crisis is subsiding. With the companies to collaborate vary, such as paid long-term care service providers, luxury hotels, residences for the elderly, companies providing health & productivity management services, insurance companies, etc., it is attracting attention as new business development.

These services for corporations in some cases require various levels according to customer needs, from online rehabilitation for slight injury or for general purposes to more profound store-type offerings including one-on-one. These kinds of paid B2B rehabilitation services are expected to expand furthermore.  

Future Outlook

The personal healthcare service market can be categorized into the following three: Health information management services, smartphone apps for disease management and prevention, and other healthcare services.

The billings for either service geared to individuals account for a small percentage, as the service providers have propelled monetization targeting companies, medical institutions, and local governments. In addition, clinical research is underway, aiming at the development of treatment apps (to be approved as medical equipment and covered by insurance) through digital therapeutics (DTx), which gathers attention as a new way of monetization. Due to high interests in preventive medicine backed by progressive aging society, many personal healthcare services are projected to expand.

Research Outline