Philips Hooks Up with Amazon to Host Medical Data in the Cloud

The Netherlands-based tech giant continues to break down the traditional boundaries between the medical and consumer sectors.

Qmed Staff

Philips apparently wants to be known as a medical technology trailblazer, leveraging consumer tech for healthcare applications when possible. Most recently, the company has announced a collaboration with Amazon to link "hundreds of millions of devices and sensors" to the cloud. Before that, however, the company was testing medical applications of Google Glass, hooked up with Salesforce on a diabetes app, debuted the first app-based ultrasound, and announced a series of mobile-enabled health-tracking devices.  

It is uncertain if its so-called HealthTech strategy can spur growth for the company, after it sold off most of its lighting business to focus on the intersection between existing healthcare and consumer technology. So far this year, the company has had a negative growth rate of roughly five percent.

But if its alliances with tech firms like Amazon and Salesforce pay off, the company could just make good on its promise to "transform how care is delivered." The company's CEO of Philips Healthcare Informatics, Solutions, and Services promised to do just that in a recent statement, adding that: "By unleashing data from connected devices and health records, combined with analytics, valuable insights into how we can live and age well can be uncovered."

Philips hopes to tap Amazon's cloud services to help monitor the quickly expanding elderly population. Cloud-based services could be used to harvest data gathered from elderly, processing it to identify health problems and potentially dangerous events such as falls. The company's HomeSafe Medical Alert system could also be used to call for help after a fall or if a serious health problem arises.

The news also made it apparent that Amazon itself is moving more into the Internet-of-Things arena, having recently unveiled its AWS IoT platform. The company's vice president, mobile and IoT, AWS Marco Argenti name dropped the relationship with Philips in a recent statement, which also mentioned the company's ties to NASA and Sonos.

Amazon's AWS IoT managed-cloud service can reportedly connect devices ranging from light bulbs and sensor

The Amazon Web Services business received some negative attention last month when 1.5 million people had their unencrypted private medical records breached. In his spare time, Texas-based IT enthusiast Chris Vickery revealed data ranging from doctor visit notes to social security numbers to drug test results and birth date data.