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| The Lifeline device--Courtesy of Philips |
Royal Philips ($PHG) is working to build on its original wearable healthcare devices for seniors--its Lifeline medical alert products. It's rolling out cloud-based, predictive analytics engine CareSage that is intended to collect health and lifestyle data to help healthcare providers more easily identify patients in need of intervention.
Philips expects that healthcare providers will use CareSage to track patients recently home from the hospital or managing chronic conditions. It will provide insights to them based upon data collected from the company's wearable medical alert devices.
"Coming home after a hospital stay is a relief for seniors, but it also comes with potential risks. By reviewing data from CareSage's analytics and our wearable medical alert devices, health systems can predict when their at-home patients are likely to be hospitalized and intervene in advance," Kimberly O'Loughlin, SVP and GM of Home Monitoring at Philips, said in a statement.
She continued, "CareSage is another example of Philips' commitment to connected health; leveraging data, analytics and our 24x7 service monitoring capabilities to help provide health systems with the right data at the right time to help deliver care for a wide range of patient populations."
The analytics system works with data from Philips LifeLine AutoAlert technology. It includes a wearable pendant and a communicator to transmit patient data on falls and GPS location. But the devices tracked via CareSage may not be limited to the proprietary Philips products; the CareSage system is built on its open, cloud-based HealthSuite Digital Platform.
The system is expected to provide a long list of benefits, according to Philips, including better preventive care, increased patient satisfaction, improved quality of life, reduced long-term hospital readmissions and improved health outcomes and cost savings.
"More than half of frail and elderly patients are discharged without any long-term monitoring, leaving them cut off from their care while at home. Staying connected with these patients in between check-ups can help keep them healthy and help prevent events that could send them back to the hospital, which is our ultimate goal in patient care," Michael Hamaker, president of WellSpan VNA Home Care, said in a statement.
The CareSage announcement is only a small part of Philips' much broader realignment to focus on HealthTech, a combination of its consumer and healthcare businesses, which it announced in the fall. As part of the transition, the company has sold some of its lighting business and its expected to hive off the remainder through an IPO in 2016.
- here is the release