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| Philips CEO Frans van Houten |
Royal Philips ($PHG) will make healthcare informatics a key emphasis as it pushes toward its previously announced shift toward organizing the company to focus on what it has dubbed "HealthTech." That's despite the fact that healthcare informatics made up less than 10% of the company's revenues last year. The conglomerate announced a series of initiatives recently, mostly aimed at improving data access to and sharing for some of its healthcare imaging technologies.
In late September, Philips said it would focus solely on HealthTech, a combination of its consumer lifestyle and healthcare businesses, and that it would spin off its lighting business. In 2013, HealthTech would have had €15 billion in 2013 sales ($18.7 billion), while the lighting business had €7 billion ($8.7 billion).
That news came despite the fact that healthcare is its worst performing business. This summer, the head of Philips Healthcare, Deborah DiSanzo, was booted out and CEO Frans van Houten assumed control of the segment.
In early July, DiSanzo, was ousted in a management shake-up and van Houten put the Healthcare unit under his own control. Last quarter, healthcare sales at Philips gained 1% to €2.2 billion ($2.7 billion) over the same quarter during the prior year in comparable currency, while consumer lifestyle sales added 5% to €1.2 billion ($1.5 billion). Within healthcare, Patient Care & Clinical Informatics posted "low-single digit gains."
Van Houten told Bloomberg that the U.S. market, particularly for healthcare informatics, will be a major focus for the company moving forward.
"The big investments in the U.S. healthcare market are now in informatics," Van Houten told the news outlet, adding that the existing Philips informatics business accounted for about €1.5 billion to €2 billion of the company's total annual 2013 sales of €23.3 billion.
In the last several days, the company has announced a handful of specific informatics initiatives including the expansion of an information portal that allows radiologists to track multiple types of scans for a single patient; the launch of what it says is the first portal to record, analyze and monitor the imaging radiation dose for patients and providers across multiple imaging tools; and an integrated data solution for healthcare providers to integrate video and live streaming into image-guided therapies. The latter is through a partnership with Image Stream Medical; the terms of the deal were undisclosed and a combined Philips-ISM offering is expected to launch in the U.S. in January.
Separately, Philips also expanded a collaboration with the Netherlands Cancer Institute to use imaging innovations including 3-D guided technology to improve the outcome of surgical procedures for cancer patients.
- here is the Bloomberg story on Philips and informatics
- and here are the releases for the expanded radiologist portal, the launch of the radiation tracking portal, the partnership with Image Stream and the partnership with the Netherlands Cancer Institute