This week at HIMSS21, Dutch health tech company Royal Philips added two new products to its HealthSuite, including one focused on patient flow capacity and a second zeroing in on the acute care telehealth space. 

“I think this is a time in which there has been probably no more clear view on the needs, as well as the opportunity, for how IT and how informatics can help change healthcare delivery,” Roy Jakobs, chief business leader for connected care at Royal Philips, told MobiHealthNews.

“And therefore, what you also saw through the announcement is what we focus on is how we can be a partner for our health systems and health ecosystem players in that journey of change in healthcare delivery, and how our clinical and technology insights can help deliver that.”

The patient flow capacity suite was designed to help clinicians manage patients across the care spectrum. Users are able to coordinate care and share clinical and operational data. The system lets its users manage patients across their healthcare network and affiliate networks with post-acute settings, according to the company.

Meanwhile, the acute telehealth care product was created to help health systems manage the informatics associated with virtual care. Health centers can use the tech in a centralized command center or in a decentralized model, according to Philips. 

WHY IT MATTERS

The company pitches these new tools as offering a way to help clinicians and health systems collaborate. Jakobs said that the COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on the need for collaboration. However, the company plans to continue to focus on this space in the future. 

“If we think about what are key themes that we do support, and we want to kind of double down on it, one is the collaboration need around care has been truly stepping up. And COVID accelerated, of course, the need for that in an unprecedented way, where it exposes the system in terms of where the collaboration was lacking, kind of what the impact was of that, both in terms of the patient impact, as well as the resource-management impact.”

THE LARGER TREND 

Philips has been interested in the connected care space for some time. In February the company launched the Philips Medical Tablet, a portable monitoring kit designed to help clinicians remotely monitor larger patient populations during emergency healthcare situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.

In January Philips acquired connected-care company Capsule Technologies for $635 million. The company brought with it a suite of connected medical devices and its data-integration platform that can combine device integration, vital signs monitoring and clinical-surveillance services.