Philips & SalesForce: Combining Technologies for Patient Care

Philips & SalesForce: Combining Technologies for Patient Care

On June 24, 2014, Philips introduced their latest platform for providing patient care with eCareCompanion and eCareCoordinator. “Can you make it scalable to millions and millions of patients; can you make it secure; and finally, can you make it adaptable?” More importantly, “how can we make an 80 year old person with multiple chronic diseases actually use this technology?” announced Jeroen Tas, CEO Philips Health Care Information Services.

Collaborating with SalesForce.com, Philips was able to announce the two clinical applications launching on the new platform later this summer: “Philips eCareCoordinator” and “Philips eCareCompanion.”
According to Salesforce.com, “These care collaboration applications will allow the care team to monitor patients with chronic conditions in their homes and will facilitate Philips’ Hospital to Home clinical programs, such as Banner iCare™, being piloted at Banner Health, a pioneer accountable care organization in Arizona, USA. Similar telehealth-based care delivery models for hospitals utilizing the Philips eICU program were shown to reduce mortality by 26 percent and length of stay by 20 percent in a recent large, multi-center study.”

“We have entered a new transformative era for healthcare and technology is enabling the industry to connect to, care for and engage with patients and each other in a profound new way,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “Together with Philips, we are creating an open health platform and ecosystem to benefit everyone that cares about one of the most important issues of our time.”
Philips and salesforce.com envision that apps will cover the continuum of care: from self-care and prevention, to diagnosis and treatment through recovery and wellness. The envisioned platform, based on the Salesforce1 Platform, will enable collaboration and workflow, as well as integration of data from multiple sources worldwide, including electronic medical records, diagnostic and treatment information obtained through Philips’ imaging equipment, monitoring equipment, personal devices and technologies like Apple’s HealthKit.

Moreover, the cloud-based platform is designed to be highly scalable with built-in privacy and data security. By combining the data, the platform will allow for analysis that will enhance decision making by professionals and engage patients. Both Philips and salesforce.com foresee that the platform, will utilize Philips’ clinical data stores and medical device interoperability. It is intended to be open to developers and is expected to result in a vibrant ecosystem of partners creating applications. As a result, the envisioned platform has the potential to transform both professional healthcare delivery and continuous personal health management.

By: Dan Charobee, MBA