Companies Invest Heavily in Employee Health Management IT Solutions

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Employers around the world are losing an aggregate of $300 billion annually in medical and productivity costs due to increasing incidences of employees suffering major illnesses. To tackle this global challenge, companies are collaborating with progressive employee health management information technology (EHM IT) solution providers to deploy state-of-the-art wellness programs that ensure employee well-being and better financial performance.

Frost & Sullivan forecasts that the surge in demand for EHM IT services will lead the market to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25% between 2019 and 2024, rising from $1.15 billion to a staggering $3.52 billion.

“Most global enterprises have invested in corporate policies that include holistic provisions for workplace wellness, but in many cases, they overlook the importance of devising employee-specific health benefit plans. This results in poor engagement and less-than-optimal outcomes in terms of EHM program return on investment (ROI),” said Koustav Chatterjee, Healthcare Industry Analyst, Frost & Sullivan. “Therefore, it is crucial for companies to adopt IT-enabled EHM strategies that empower employers to deploy personalized wellness, behavior change, surgical rehabilitation and benefits management services for their employees who are either at home or at the office and on the go.”

Frost & Sullivan’s latest analysis, Global Employee Health Management IT Market, Forecast to 2024, highlights how digital health platforms are expected to help employers in devising and scaling these clinical and wellness programs. This study also classifies key markets based on their receptivity for employer-specific health and wellness initiatives that are delivered through digital health platforms.

North America leads the market in the adoption of progressive EHM IT programs that deliver disease-specific services and measure outcomes at all levels. Employers in Europe, on the other hand, prioritize behavioral health as much as clinical health and are more likely to adopt multi-vertical EHM platforms. As for the Asia-Pacific region, the core emphasis is on formulating culturally relevant and ethnically appropriate EHM programs that can yield better employee engagement, while the Middle East and African markets are focusing on formulating policies that prioritize corporate wellness, with a notion to create an ecosystem of holistic EHM.

“North America remains well represented by progressive EHM IT vendors; however, the greatest business opportunity in this sector lies in the Middle East and Africa,” noted Chatterjee. “Here, the increase in employee benefit costs is projected to be the highest among the studied regions due to the rising prevalence of lifestyle and chronic diseases in the workplaces.”

Employers and vendors operating in the EHM IT sector can capitalize on the opportunities in:

• Investing in integrated healthcare benefits management platforms to personalize EHM programs, deliver educational content, offer access to providers, process claims and endorse workplace wellness for all, regardless of seniority or ethnicity;

• Making employee programs engaging via cognitive EHM IT, including natural language processing technology, online peer groups, targeted devices, and virtual health coaches;

• Promoting areas that need IT-enabled and anonymized intervention, such as maternity care, childcare, and menstrual care;

• Offering IT-enabled home health services for chronic care employees or others who recently encountered surgical interventions, as this has resulted in better productivity.