Market Overview

Of the domestic medical ICT market in this research, cloud-based electronic health record systems and cloud-based PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication Systems) have been contributing in raising the implementation rate especially in small-scale hospitals, due to effectiveness in alleviating the burdens by not requiring on-premises servers and by reducing cost for implementation and maintenance. On the other hand, they have disadvantages in not being able to customize specifications by each hospital, making them relatively inappropriate for large-scale hospitals so that implementation at such hospitals has not been in progress. VNA (Vendor Neutral Archive) services for PACS are deployed partly at large-scale hospitals for reducing the risks of data loss in the event of a disaster.

Telemedicine, medical care reservation solutions, and electronic medical consultation solutions (online or a tablet) that are introduced mainly in clinics, have shown market expansion, against a backdrop of increasing demand for avoiding 3Cs (i.e., closed space, crowded place and conversations in close proximity) and improvement in adoption rate at newly opened clinics.

In such a situation, the domestic medical ICT market size for FY2021 (based on the sales at businesses) has been estimated as 16,578 million yen. When observing the market by segment in the same fiscal year, the largest market share has been occupied by medical care reservation solutions, followed by in the order of cloud-based PACS, VNA services, and cloud-based electronic health record systems for clinics.

Noteworthy Topics

Implementation of Telemedicine Expanded due to COVID-19 Pandemic

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused telemedicine to gather attention at once, which rapidly increased the number of newly entered companies offering telemedicine. Because of a combination of time-limited deregulation by the government and free-provision of telemedicine solutions by each of market entrants, the number of facilities subscribing to telemedicine increased quickly from April to July 2020, and has been on the rise since then.

Under such circumstances, the market size in FY2020 expanded to 1.81 times larger than the previous fiscal year. However, the growth of the number of subscribers subdued by FY2021, and as many companies provided the system free of charge to medical institutions, the market size in FY2021 declined from the preceding year.

Future Outlook

The domestic medical ICT market size in FY2023, based on the sales at businesses, is projected to rise to 21,140 million yen, 1.28 times larger than FY2021. The largest growth rate can be attained by electronic consultation systems and cloud-based electronic health record systems for clinics.

As for electronic consultation systems, the full-scale market formation has been in progress since around FY2018 with increasing number of market entrants since around that time, high growth rate is continuing. Regarding the high growth rate of cloud-based electronic health record systems for clinics, the rate of choosing cloud-based systems is increasing at newly opened clinics, for lower initial cost, and because the vendors proactively developing cloud-based products are on the rise.

Research Outline