This is part of Elion’s weekly market map series where we break down critical vendor categories and the key players in them. For more, become a member and sign up for our email here.

When NASA launched its Mercury program in 1958, it faced an unprecedented challenge: how to monitor the health of astronauts hurtling through space at 17,000 miles per hour. The solution? A revolutionary system of sensors and telemetry that transmitted vital signs back to doctors on Earth—essentially creating the world's first remote patient monitoring system.

Today, remotely tracking patient health has evolved from space-age innovation into mainstream healthcare. Through remote patient monitoring (or RPM), healthcare teams can monitor patients' vital signs and health metrics either in real-time or through regular data uploads from their homes to detect health issues, reduce hospital readmissions, and allow for more timely interventions. Healthcare providers can adjust treatment plans remotely and provide personalized care recommendations based on trending data.

What Is the Value Proposition for Health Systems?

RPM offers a value proposition that extends well beyond traditional care models. For health systems, RPM transforms reactive care into proactive health management through continuous monitoring and early intervention, significantly reducing costly hospital readmissions and emergency room visits. 

From an operational perspective, RPM optimizes clinical workflows by automating routine monitoring tasks, allowing staff to focus on high-value care activities. Most notably, with established CPT billing codes, RPM programs can generate new revenue streams while simultaneously improving care delivery—creating a rare alignment of clinical and financial benefits. This technology especially benefits patients with chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension, helping the sickest in the health system avoid major events while still staying in close contact with their care teams.

What Are the Major Components of RPM?

The implementation and components of remote patient monitoring will vary by therapeutic area, but a few common key layers will be present across all RPM programs:

• Patient devices and data collection: Includes proprietary, vendor-specific offerings, traditional medical devices, and consumer wearables or smartphone applications. Regardless of modality, there’s a emphasis on usability regardless of technical expertise.
  

• Connectivity and transmission: Many RPM programs use smartphone apps as the layer between device and platform, but other options, like cellular hubs exist as alternatives.
  

• Provider-side application layer: Where staff monitor data, see trends or summaries for individuals or populations, and take necessary actions. This middle layer will process data for rules-based or algorithmic alerting. Several software platforms use incoming data to predict an event’s probability, allowing for proactive, rather than reactive, intervention. This app layer is where RPM platforms will integrate into downstream software like EHRs, patient communication platforms, or billing.
  

• Human touch: While RPM programs can drive efficiency, there's still a need for staff focus, particularly on onboarding and education. More intensive, hands-on early investment to personalize the experience for patients can be critical for ensuring long-term engagement and success.
  

Vendor Landscape

Sifting through the many vendors within RPM can be daunting as many aspects are not heavily differentiated: the billing codes utilized are more generalized, within many categories the devices and sensors involved are fairly commoditized except at the high-end, and interoperability has made integration, and thus switching, easier.

One approach to breaking down the market is to examine the market through more of a therapeutic area lens:

• At the top, there are a number of cross-specialty, full-stack vendors that serve many therapeutic areas, such as Biofourmis, Cadence, Current Health, Health Recovery Solutions, or Vitalera.
  

• With heart disease remaining America's leading killer, it's no surprise that cardio-focused RPM dominates as the largest single area. One example is Biobeat and their cuff-less blood pressure monitoring solution.
  

• A few other areas of interest and growth include diabetes and metabolic conditions (Glooko), maternal health (Babyscripts and Delfina), neurology (Alva Health, which specializes in remote stroke monitoring), and cross-specialty medication adherence with vendors PatchRx or Commure RPM Pilltrack which provide a more-device centric complement to the medication adherence software platforms.
  

There’s also a more technical approach to classification. For example, there’s a class of vendors that act more exclusively as connectivity platforms, like Junction, Terra or Validic, which focus on APIs and integration services designed to more broadly and easily allow the connections between medical devices or wearables and downstream RPM platforms.

What Comes Next?

In response to the increased adoption of RPM post-2020, some have cast a skeptical eye on the true value-story and ROI of RPM. In April 2025, the Peterson Center on Healthcare released a report which, called out a need for improved specificity within data collection and greater transparency to generate higher-quality evidence for efficacy and value research.While the body of literature surrounding RPM continues to grow annually, the rapid explosion of adoption has outstripped the industry’s ability to fully assess what’s working with the highest level of rigor.

On the technological side, as AI enables improved data from devices and wearables, we may see even more opportunity for expansion as consumer wearables begin to support blood pressure or mood tracking.