What are the Factors Causing the Boom of the Ultrasound Device Market?

There was a time when people used to be scared if they heard the doctor say that they have to go through a surgical procedure for therapeutic purposes. However, now the situation has changed radically, and due to technological advancements, the preference for minimally invasive surgeries has been increasing rapidly. A minimally invasive surgical procedure is associated with safety and lower postoperative patient morbidity as opposed to the traditional approach for the same operation. Since the emergence of this technique, it was predicted that more than 80% of all surgical procedures will be performed with some form of minimal invasiveness.

These procedures often make use of ultrasound devices; thus, their growing prevalence is also resulting in the rising need for ultrasound devices. In these devices, ultrasound waves are produced by a transducer that emits ultrasound waves, as well as detects the ultrasound echoes which are reflected back. The transducer sends out a beam of sound waves into the body, which are sent back to the transducer by the tissues in the path of the beam. The echoes generate electrical signals that are sent to the ultrasound scanner, which then calculates the distance from the transducer to the tissue boundary. These distances are utilized for producing 2D images of tissues and organs.

These devices can be cart/trolley-based or portable/handheld/compact, between which, the demand for portable/handheld/compact devices is predicted to grow faster in the coming years, owing to their ease of use in remote locations. Ultrasound devices have a number of applications, namely obstetrics and gynecology, cardiology, urology, general radiology/imaging, and vascular. While the demand for ultrasound devices was the highest for general radiology/imaging applications in the past, their requirement for cardiology applications is also expected to grow substantially in the near future. This can be majorly ascribed to the surging prevalence of heart diseases across the globe.

In the past, Europe emerged as the largest ultrasound device market, which is owing to the rising preference for minimally invasive procedures and increasing number of product approvals in the region. In addition to this, the surging incidence of chronic diseases is also resulting in a rising requirement for diagnostic and therapeutic ultrasound devices in Europe. Other than this, the demand for these devices is also projected to rise in the Asia-Pacific region in the years to come.

Hence, the requirement for ultrasound devices is rising due to the growing preference for minimally invasive procedures and increasing prevalence of chronic diseases.