The move will enable providers to remotely monitor and communicate with patients managing health conditions in their own homes.

Maureen Kingsley

Qualcomm Life's 2net Platform will serve as the
connectivity system for Philips Healthsuite. 

Philips is continuing its deep push into connected, personalized healthcare solutions via a collaboration with Qualcomm Life, the healthcare division of semiconductor maker and telecom giant Qualcomm.

Qualcomm Life's 2net Platform, which comprises 2net Hub, 2net Mobile, and Smartlinx, will serve as the medical device connectivity system for Philips HealthSuite, a cloud-enabled network of healthcare-related devices, apps, and digital tools. By joining the Qualcomm Life 2net network, Philips can provide its HealthSuite users seamless access to a number of connected medical devices, including medication dispensers, medical-grade biosensors, ventilators, blood-pressure monitors, point-of-care self-tests, and blood-glucose meters.

The goal is to "advance connected health across the health continuum--from healthy living and prevention to chronic-care management and home care," according to a Philips press release.

The collaboration enables the companies to leverage each other's respective capabilities: Philips' connected health informatics and regulated-healthcare cloud-data management and analytics will join forces with Qualcomm Life's capabilities in secure, medical-grade device connectivity and integration. The collective goal is to enable both companies to offer care providers "enhanced, scalable, connected care solutions and services within a secure global ecosystem," according to the press release. A sizeable part of this ecosystem involves providers' remote monitoring of and communication with patients managing health conditions in their own homes.

An example of an implementation of this collaboration will soon launch, according to Philips, with the company's Trilogy family of ventilators and the Care Orchestrator care-management application for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other respiratory conditions and their care providers.

"As the home is fast becoming a viable care setting, care providers, home health agencies, and other institutions are increasingly using connected care to reduce emergency care [and] readmissions of patients with chronic diseases," Jeroen Tas, CEO, Connected Care and Health Informatics at Philips, is quoted as saying in a press release. "By collaborating with Qualcomm Life and leveraging its connectivity and wireless expertise, we aim to help care providers to engage better with their patients and contribute to the goal of improving outcomes. Patient self-management combined with 24/7 connectivity to a care network is an emerging model that enables scalable chronic disease management for patients and providers."

Philips's other recent announcements of its steady march into advanced digital healthcare technologies include the European launch of OncoSuite for visualizing and treating cancer tumors, a device in R&D for measuring blood oxygenation with a camera, and medical-grade health-monitoring devices--including a health watch, body-analysis scale, and blood-pressure analyzer--that hit the market this summer.

As for Qualcomm, this latest collaboration comes on the heels of other partnerships with big-name healthcare players forged in the past 12 months, including one with Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, one with Medtronic, and one with Novartis.

Maureen Kingsley is a contributor to Qmed. 

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[image courtesy of QUALCOMM LIFE]