A new study by IMS Research predicts that consumers monitoring their own health rather than patients in managed telehealth systems will boost sales of wireless health monitoring devices. The firm forecasts shipments of more than 50 million monitoring devices enabled with technologies such as Bluetooth and ANT+ over the next five years. The numbers used in telehealth systems will be smaller, it says.

In fact the research firm predicts that self-monitoring will be the dominant mobile health trend among consumers. It says that self-monitoring consumers will account for more than 80 percent of all wirelesss-enabled medical devices sold to consumers in 2016.

The consumer trend is growing faster than that for telehealth systems which are implemented by healthcare providers. Still there will be growth in the proportion of wireless devices deployed in managed systems which IMS says will increase from five percent in 2011 to 20 percent in 2016.

The relatively slow deployment of wireless technology in telehealth systems has a number of causes says the report including the reluctance to move past trials as well as ongoing issues with reimbursement models and strict regulations on use of patients’ medical data.

In contrast consumers now have greater means for self-monitoring with the  popularity of medical apps on smartphones as well as a greater awareness of the activity’s benefits in terms of their own health.