The healthcare industry is one of biometrics’ most promising opportunities, according to a new report from Tractica.

Biometrics in healthcare settings can speed up administrative processes, reduce fraud, and eliminate mistakes due to high workloads, which can lead to costly or fatal errors. “However it remains a nascent market,” says principal analyst Bob Lockhart. “Success stories are scarce; even large healthcare networks are barely dipping their toes into the water, with early proofs of concept.”

To succeed in the healthcare market, Lockhart believes, biometrics companies will face a key challenge in cultivating the right sales channels. Healthcare facilities will not shop directly for biometrics technology, but will instead seek fully integrated business and technology solutions, which may or may not include biometrics. Vendors must therefore ensure that biometrics are integrated into the building blocks of those solutions.

Starting from a base of $250 million in 2015, Tractica forecasts that global healthcare biometrics revenue will reach $3.5 billion by 2024, with cumulative revenue for the 10-year period totaling $12.5 billion. Also, the firm anticipates that the key healthcare use cases, which will drive adoption of biometrics hardware and software in the industry, will include home/remote patient access, care provider authentication, patient identification and tracking, and pharmacy dispensing.