Emerging technologies help: the rehabilitation medical market is welcoming fresh blood

The concept of rehabilitation medicine appeared after the Second World War. It mainly carried out treatment and nursing work for injured soldiers and workers. On the basis of orthopedics and physical medicine, it formed multidisciplinary collaborations such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, language therapy, psychotherapy, and rehabilitation engineering. The working mode of treatment, after which it was defined by WHO as the fourth category of medicine together with preventive medicine, clinical medicine, and health medicine.

With the acceleration of the global aging and the rapid increase of the chronically ill population, rehabilitation, as the third pole of modern medicine, has become the new engine of global health management.

According to the results of the fourth sample survey on the living conditions of urban and rural elderly in China, the number of elderly people aged 60 and above who were disabled and partially disabled in China reached 40.63 million in 2015, accounting for 18.5% of the elderly population. About 20% need rehabilitation care, and by 2020, the number of elderly patients in China who need rehabilitation will exceed 50 million.

In addition, there are many disabled people in China. According to the prediction of the China Disabled Persons' Federation, the number of disabled people in China will exceed 100 million by 2020. At present, less than 10% of disabled people have received different levels of rehabilitation services. The market has great potential for development.

At present, the size of the US rehabilitation medical market has exceeded 200 billion US dollars, and the average per capita is about 800 US dollars. There are more than 30,000 companies in the rehabilitation medical industry. In 2015, the domestic rehabilitation medical market was about 27 billion yuan. At present, China is vigorously promoting the reform of medical services. With the establishment and improvement of the tertiary rehabilitation medical system and the further implementation of the rehabilitation medical insurance policy, the industry will enter an outbreak period. It is predicted that by 2020, the scale of China's rehabilitation medical industry is expected to reach 70 billion yuan, and the annual compound growth rate is not less than 20%.

The development of modern emerging smart sensor technology, cloud computing technology and human-computer interaction technology has brought revolutionary opportunities to the rehabilitation medical industry. In 2014, a number of rehabilitation equipment companies were listed abroad, and rehabilitation medical robots began to enter people. The vision helps patients with problems such as mobility disorders to stand and walk again. The AR and VR industries, which have received much attention in 2016, have also entered the rehabilitation medical market and have achieved many new discoveries and results. Let's take a look at the startups that are using emerging technologies to change the rehabilitation industry.