Home-based healthcare business to touch $ 13 billion by 2025
Consumers are warming to the idea of home healthcare providers to get complex procedures and diagnostics done without having to step out—even beyond the pandemic.
Though Covid gave tailwinds to home health diagnostics, the industry is expected to continue growing at 15-19% a year to touch $13 billion by 2025 from $5.4 billion currently, according to management consulting firm Redseer.
In spite of a rising number of home healthcare startups— such as Portea Medical, Care24, HealthCare at HOME (HCAH), Tribeca Care and hospital chain-led homecare services Apollo Homecare and Max@Home—only around 1% of India’s home healthcare market is organised, as consumers often opt for alternatives in their neighbourhoods.
Home healthcare includes critical care of intense respiratory and neurological ailments, physiotherapy, elderly care, and post-surgical care.
“Home healthcare is a largely an unorganised market. This pushed organised firms to bring in newer solutions such as quarantine care during Covid. Customers seeing a risk in contracting the virus, hospitals advising patients to leverage healthcare at home and insurers looking at new products for this segment are some of the key drivers for the home health diagnostics market in India,” said Kushal Bhatnagar, engagement manager, Redseer.
With the fear of infection, customers are postponing diagnostics involving physiotherapy, while the demand for critical and post-surgical care has surged, which is pushing the organised home health care market to grow at 40% annually compared to 25% pre-Covid, Bhatnagar added.
Meena Ganesh, managing director and chief executive, Portea Medical, pointed out that even insurance companies that didn’t cover this space earlier have started doing so.
“Individuals are willing to take complex hospital-based procedures at home now like chemotherapy, dialysis and post-cancer supportive care. That’s a shift in mindset. There needs to be a synergy between healthcare at home, at the facility, and through digital mediums. While people have experienced the convenience and overall benefits, even state governments think care at home has to be bettered,” Ganesh said.
In the last six months, Portea has supported 170,000 people who tested Covid positive with consultations and monitoring at home.
Bhatnagar added that even hospitals are able to leverage a 20% reduction in costs and infrastructure investments through these models, making it a lucrative segment for more hospital-chains. Remote health monitoring startup Dozee, which recently raised ₹12.5 crore funding from Prime Venture Partners and 3one4 Capital, said that it has seen a 5x jump in sales of its remote health tracking device.