POC Tests Represent Significant Share of World IVD Market

With the ability to help reduce healthcare costs while simultaneously improving patient care, point-of-care (POC) tests represent a significant and growing share of the world in vitro diagnostics (IVD) market.

The growth in POC sales, which is projected to increase by 6% annually through 2014, is largely related to significant increases in glucose self-testing of diabetics, and to various professional test segments including critical care and cardiac markers. Other contributing factors include the globalization of infectious diseases with the associated public health issues, and the need to monitor an increasingly larger group of people with chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, arthritis, and cancer.

In a new report, Kalorama Information (Rockville, MD, USA), a healthcare market research publisher, valued the market for combined over the counter (OTC) and professional applications of POC testing at US$13.3 billion worldwide in 2009.

Although POC tests (with the exception of the diabetes segment) have not achieved the 15% to 20% market growth predicted in the late 1990s, they have made a significant contribution to patient care. The total POC testing market has increased its market share in the United States and Europe from 25% of the IVD market in 2003 to 30% in 2009.

"As the largest single market for IVD and POC products, the U.S. has an enormous impact on how the rapid test industry develops," says Shara Rosen, Kalorama Information's lead diagnostics analyst and author of the report. "Managed care's obsession with cost reductions is pushing the need for decentralized testing in the home, at the bedside, and in the physician's office."

A different set of companies is active in each sub-segment of the highly diversified market for POC tests. More than 70 companies are active in POC markets, but with successive rounds of market consolidation and the emergence of Alere (Waltham, MA. USA), formerly Inverness Medical Innovations, as a major POC vendor, Kalorama estimates that 27 companies held 94% of the world market for POC tests in 2009.

Including details of the technologies and trends in decentralized testing, Kalorama Information's report specially focuses on the economics of rapid test use in physicians' offices, hospital critical care units, and emergency medicine and how it will impact healthcare.
Kalorama Information supplies the latest in independent market research in the life sciences, as well as a full range of custom research services.

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