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| Texas A&M's campus in College Station--Courtesy of Texas A&M University |
Philips ($PHG) and Texas A&M University are joining forces on a project focused on developing population health solutions to prevent diabetes, asthma and infectious diseases in South Texas.
The partnership falls under the Healthy South Texas pilot project, funded by the Texas legislature to the tune of $10 million. The program aims to deliver preventive healthcare to 27 South Texas counties. As part of the project, Philips and Texas A&M will launch The Center for Global Health and Innovation on the university's campus, which will serve to foster public-private partnerships to "rapidly design, develop, prototype, and showcase healthcare solutions," Philips said in a statement.
The collaboration will include creating integrated emergency medical services (EMS) solutions, developing point-of-health diagnostics and biosurveillance and launching the Healthy South Texas Population Health Initiative.
Philips will provide "decision-support and analytics technologies" and training programs to help state, city and municipal administrators prepare for, react to and recover from "major medical disasters." The pair will combine Philips' diagnostics expertise with Texas A&M's animal biosurveillance capabilities to create a network for monitoring infectious disease. Finally, the population health initiative will seek to bring wellness services in the form of disease prevention and control programs to every citizen in South Texas.
"At Philips, we are committed to building a healthy society by improving the lives of 3 billion people by 2025, working in collaboration with world-class organizations like The Texas A&M University System to understand how we can really impact communities: from outreach programs focused on healthy living and prevention, to understanding how we can improve our ability to react to health threats," said Hans Aloys-Wischmann, head of Philips Research for North America, in a statement. "This program puts us shoulder-to-shoulder with those who are on the front line of care, giving us unprecedented insight into developing real-life applications and solutions that can make a difference in human health on both a local and global scale."
This partnership follows tie-ups in other areas, including a research agreement with the Yale School of Medicine on interventional oncology and a project with MIT on a tool to detect brain injury. It has also teamed up with San Diego's Banyan Biomarkers on a handheld concussion blood test and with UC Irvine on a breast cancer diagnostic for women with dense breasts.
- here's the statement