(NYSE:PHG)
operates across a wide range of spaces as one of the world’s largest companies. One of them – Connected Care – has used partnerships, in addition to digital advancements, to continue its growth.
The company recently signed partnerships with major American insurers And electronic health records companies. Partnerships with health systems including Hoag and Rush Health, adding to an agreement with Bon Secours Mercy Santé from last year. This year also saw the launch of a new AI Market for ECGwith in addition investment in AI technologies to boost connected care efforts.
Beyond health systems, the company has signed major collaborations and expanded its partnerships with big names in medical technology such as Masimo, Medtronic And Getinge.
According to Julia Strandbergthe principal leader of the company’s Connected Care business, the company uses these partnerships to achieve its goals, creating efficiency and security for health systems and beyond. This isn’t new either, as Strandberg points out explained in an interview with Mass device in 2023.
Strandberg recently spoke with Mass device once again on Philips Connected Care, its partnerships, the use of AI and more.
The following has been lightly edited for space and clarity.
An introduction to Strandberg’s goals with the Philips Connected Care business
Julia Strandberg: “I’ve been here for about two and a half years with over 20 years of experience monitoring IT and digital health across large enterprises and small organizations. It’s really about trying to understand the nuances and differences between organizations that facilitate this type of IT and digital health driven world. My entire career has been focused on market impact and evolution towards innovation. It’s about how innovation actually meets market needs and then how we use things like product-market fit, which is an approach and methodology that many people use, along with market development principles, to ultimately drive adoption of innovations at each stage.
What’s driving the company’s push toward connected care?
J.S.: “It’s about three things. It’s about the patients we serve, it’s the customer we engage with, and then the team I have around me. I believe all three of these elements of intervention are essential to the success of the business, but also to advance the delivery of care.”
“Ultimately, the reason I’m here is because, first of all, Phillips Connected Care has strength globally and can really, really change the delivery of care. (It’s about finding out how) we can use technology to support clinical, operational and financial benefits for the health system, helping us in the community.”
How the Philips structure approaches connected care
J.S.: “Phillips has three major businesses: connected care, diagnostics and treatment, and personal health. Connected care connects health from the hospital to the home, from the cardiovascular system to the respiratory system… We are a very large software-driven organization, and we also know that Phillips can’t do it alone, so increasingly… we know that we need to come together as an ecosystem to achieve the group’s mission. We are the global leader in monitoring, and I call that management, both inpatient and (alternative) settings We are the leading provider of mobile cardiac telemetry, including an outpatient monitoring service focused on assessing heart rhythms and providing recommendations to primary care cardiology and electrophysiology across the health system We have a number 1, number 2 position in many different areas within my group, and we obviously have to tie it all together.
The “five rights”
J.S.: “You’ve heard about the phenomenon of the five rights: the right place, the right time, the right patient, the right intervention and the right outcome. That’s our goal. In connected care, the market has accelerated to deliver efficiencies and outcomes in care delivery since COVID. It’s not just the large health systems coming together, but it’s also the physician practices that are now being acquired to become health system-affiliated practices. The ecosystem is coming together…and that’s us simply provides a basis on which we can continue to promote standardization of patient monitoring across large health systems.
“We’re working on a lot of exciting innovations with our large healthcare customers to again support the next level of standardization that allows us to digitize, which allows us to automate. Automation allows us to deliver care truly where the patient is.”
The role of strategic partnerships
J.S.: “It’s about humility in two ways. Humility is (the idea) that we can’t do everything, so we need partnerships and we need to act as an ecosystem. … It’s about bringing technologies together to serve the purpose and mission of the health system. First, it’s recognizing that you can’t do everything. Second, it’s how you do it in a way that allows each of the partners, plus Philips, to shine and deliver that proposition of value.”
“We do a lot of what I would call vendor partnerships. But humility also shows that health systems have a lot of value. We want to provide value to them so that they can be involved in patient care and health, but also, our customers and our clients have a lot of technology. They almost look at it as a learning lab. They have a tremendous opportunity to be a game changer, and so partnering with large organizations… that’s how we make sure that we continue to elevate the level of value that we deploy.
How is AI factored into these efforts at Philips?
J.S.: “We use (AI) in two distinct ways. One is to use it internally. From an organizational perspective, it’s about efficiency and productivity and how we engage in innovation faster and faster. We’re introducing AI into a variety of different areas to help us with complaint management, coding, etc. It’s really important and having governance around that is exceptionally important.”
“How does AI fit into the healthcare delivery paradigm? I see this happening in a number of different ways. … We have the power of this new paradigm that is incredibly exciting in generative AI. We know we need to highlight living algorithms because it’s really important. Then there’s the ethical use and education associated with it. We strongly believe that we need to protect it and develop it in a transparent way.”
“There’s also the operational use of AI. A lot of it is about optimizing workflows, getting a good understanding of resource management, personnel management, etc.”
“By supporting fundamental intelligence and engagement at the clinician level and then at the patient level, when we get there, we will have seamlessness between hospital and home and achieve the goal that I want to achieve – and that many of our clients want to achieve – which is to prevent bad things from happening.”
What about the growing role of “as-a-service” elements of connected care?
J.S.: “We continue to move towards ‘as a service’ models where software and services are dominant, not hardware. It’s about how we make sure we understand the changing reality of our health systems. Everywhere in the world, they’re hurting financially. We believe our ability to adopt these as-a-service models supports where health systems are and where they need to go. Frankly, it’s a great trade-off because as a service you have to be incredibly close to your customer and understand their needs and respond to their needs… We believe the as-a-service model is consistent with the direction we want to go as an organization.
“Increasingly, we’re seeing our hospitals and health system customers engage in a different way of financial exchange and value exchange. It’s been a pretty interesting evolution for us and it’s putting more emphasis on software. It’s about ensuring that our service models can do everything from monitoring monitors and the infrastructure of a health system. We do that on behalf of our customers, but we also do a lot of innovation and development on the platform. You can do that in a fairly agile way, and this business model allows us to do that.”
Learn more about medical design and outsourcing: Philips Chief Medical Officer explains how the company leverages partnerships to fuel the adoption of medical technology innovations