The market size for RTLS market for healthcare is predicted to grow from USD 2.0 billion in 2023 to USD 5.8 billion by 2028, at a CAGR of 23.5%.

Healthcare is one of the largest adopters of RTLS solutions. Different wireless technologies, such as Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi), Ultrasound, Infrared (IR), Ultra-Wideband (UWB), and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), are being used in modern-day RTLS solutions, depending on the use case or application area.

RTLS market players continuously strive to develop more robust and innovative solutions to stay ahead in the competition. As a result, ultra-wideband (UWB) and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technologies have made a mark recently and are expected to witness exponential growth in the near future. Rapidly growing startups are providing various innovative solutions based on relatively new RTLS technologies such as UWB, BLE, ZigBee, and RuBee.

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DRIVERS: Rising security and safety concerns of patients/staff:

The safety and security of people and assets is the key concern of medical institutions, hospitals, and senior living facilities. Patient tracking, wander management, and access control are becoming some of the essential parameters to be trailed in the hospital environment. RTLS solutions help healthcare organizations increase the safety and security of its staff, patients, and assets by providing real-time information about their location. Advanced RTLS solutions are combined with security systems, such as access control systems and infant protection systems, thereby improving the overall security and protecting infants and patients by restricting unauthorized visitors to enter certain zones. Thus, RTLS solutions witness high demand from the healthcare sector to fulfill the requirement for patient safety and security of electronic health records and valuable assets owing to their capability to safeguard the facility, patients, and personnel.

OPPORTUNITIES: Increasing demand for RTLS solutions in developing countries:

The market for RTLS in developing regions such as Asia Pacific, South America and Africa is estimated to grow rapidly owing to the rising customer awareness and huge untapped market opportunities, especially in healthcare, manufacturing, and retail sectors. The acceptance of RTLS solutions in healthcare markets in the Asia Pacific, especially across countries such as Australia, India, China, and other Asia Pacific countries, is growing significantly. The healthcare market in Asia Pacific has witnessed increased adoption of RTLS solutions with Wi-Fi technology as end users utilize the already present infrastructure to drive down installation costs for RTLS. The Asia Pacific healthcare markets are projected to be the significant growth areas for RTLS. The main driving factor would be the rising tide of healthcare-associated infections and increasing focus on developing healthcare infrastructure, which would lead to adopting RTLS solutions in the healthcare market

CHALLENGES: Trade-offs while designing RTLS solutions:

RTLS solutions consist of various hardware components such as RTLS tags/badges/readers etc. These equipment are used across healthcare organizations to monitor and track assets, patients, and staff. These tags are supposed to meet some crucial parameters in terms of accuracy, performance, and power consumption, to meet specific customer requirements. However, any one solution can not fufill all the performance standards, and manufacturers need to make tradeoffs to meet requirements of specific applications such as asset tracking or personnel monitoring. For instance, narrowband tags may not offer highest accuracy whereas wideband tags may offer accuracy but lack in other aspects such as power consumption. Hence, it is difficult to develop one solution that could fulfill all requirements and such challenges in designing a perfect RTLS solution may act as a challenge for this market’s growth.