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The installed base of M2M connected devices within the health sector will exceed 774 million by 2020, according to a report from Machina Research.

North America will be the largest region for the duration of the forecast, with a share of worldwide connected medical devices peaking at 54% and falling back to 42% by the end of the forecast period, as growth in Europe accelerates.

Short range connectivity technologies will dominate throughout the forecast period due to the typical topology of M2M healthcare products: most are characterised by multiple devices, connected to a central hub or aggregation device. Accordingly, the researchers expect that the overwhelming majority of M2M connected healthcare devices will be connected only indirectly to wide area networks.

In terms of wide area mobile connectivity technologies, 3G will dominate in the early years of the forecast, mostly transitioning to 4G over a four-year period between 2012 and 2016. The report says 2G will find relatively little application in the M2M connected healthcare market.

Total traffic generated by M2M applications in the healthcare sector (and carried over wide area networks) will approach 78Pbyte by 2020, a CAGR of 75% from 2010’s figure of 283Tbyte. The proportion of such traffic carried over mobile networks will remain relatively high throughout the forecast period, falling from 72% in 2010 to 43% in 2020.

Total mobile network traffic generated by M2M products in the healthcare sector will exceed 33Pbyte by 2020, a CAGR of 66%.

Overall, global network traffic revenues for mobile operators can be expected to exceed €3.1bn in 2020. Revenue for M2M connected healthcare applications will total €69bn in 2020, with the North America region accounting for 37% of global revenues, Europe 31% and developed Asia Pacific and emerging Asia Pacific markets accounting for 12% and 11% of revenues, respectively.

“The market for M2M healthcare applications will be huge, €69bn in 2020,” said Jim Morrish, director of Machina Research. “We expect that €3.1bn of this revenue will go to mobile network operators for provision of data carriage services, but the rest is up for grabs.

“Telecoms operators, equipment vendors and various service providers will all want a slice of the pie, and who gets what all comes down to business models.”

The report is called: “Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Communication in Healthcare 2010-20.”