Teleradiology Market by 2024

As per the Grand View research, the global teleradiology market is projected to grow at a staggering rate of 20% over the next few years – which propel it into the league of the best performing outsourcing fields – and become $8.24 billion market by 2024. What is the reason for the unprecedented growth and why is the healthcare industry going ga-ga over this service?

Yes, there is an acute shortage of manpower in this space and if recent reports are anything to go by, the volume of radiographic procedures being conducted will surpass the number of radiologist being inducted into the field by a ratio of 15:2. But that can’t be the only reason for the rise of teleradiology services into such a hot commodity. There has to be other reasons; but before we go there, let’s try to understand what the situation would be in the absence of teleradiology service by recounting the horror that happened 10 years ago.

A patient in his mid-40s had the worst headache of his life. The pain was so excruciating that as soon as he arrived at the hospital, emergency room doctor attending the case suspected a cerebral hemorrhage and ordered a CT (computed tomography) scan of patient’s brain.

It was around 11.30 pm on a Friday night, and like most small hospitals in the US during that time, the facility didn’t have an in-house radiologist to interpret the results of the scan. Unable to decode exact reason for the trauma, the doctor decided to put the patient on pain-killers and wait for the radiologist to arrive the next morning. Unfortunately this wait proved to very costly and by the time doctor was able to know that there was a huge tumor in the left temporal lobe of the patient and initiate a life-saving surgery, the patient had given up his fight for life.

The situation would have been easily averted with the usage of teleradiology services. Leveraging this advanced medical imaging service, the doctor had to just send the digital copies of x-ray, CT, MRI, ultrasound and other scans to radiologists working remotely in locations such as Bangalore, in the middle-of-the-night and obtain detailed reports, which could have helped saved the life of the patient.

This real-life example clearly speaks volume about the prowess of teleradiology services.