According to a new market research report the current market for disposable medical device sensors was valued at $3.6 billion in 2015. It’s predicted to hit $5.6 billion over the next four years.

Disposable medical device sensors are emerging as powerful, cost-effective tools for diagnosing diseases, monitoring vital human parameters, and for various therapeutic applications. Over the years, sensor-based devices have evolved in terms of characteristics, performance, and features due to the continuous improvements in sophistication of electronics in medical and pharmaceutical applications.

A majority of this growth is attributed to the rising incidence of hospital-acquired infections, escalating healthcare costs.

The advent of IT revolution, wireless sensor technology, disposable sensors, and biosensors in healthcare has played a significant role in the evolution of sensors in healthcare.

Moreover, the advent of microsystem technologies such as MEMS, SI-based sensors, and microfluidic chips has revolutionized the medical and pharmaceutical electronics segment with greater accuracy, precision characteristics, advanced control, and low power consumption in devices and equipment.

This market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.3% during the forecast period of 2015 to 2020. A majority of this growth is attributed to the rising incidence of hospital-acquired infections, escalating healthcare costs, investments by venture capitalist firms in the development of disposable sensor-based devices, and government support for R&D activities for these devices.

The large share of this segment is mainly attributed to the increasing demand for monitoring and diagnostic devices such as continuous blood glucose monitoring and wide use of pregnancy test strips, HIV test strips, drug and alcohol test strips, and glucose test strips in home healthcare and point-of-care (POC) diagnostics.