Philips Collaborates With Microsoft To Enhance Healthcare Efficiencies

Philips Electronics has entered into a collaboration with Microsoft to build on Philips Healthcare's foundation of healthcare informatics and advanced clinical decision support offerings that drive efficiency and effectiveness at the point of care.

Working together, the companies aim to integrate technologies that will yield faster delivery of meaningful health information, further improve healthcare efficiency and productivity, and reduce development and infrastructure costs.

At the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2010 Conference & Exhibition, Philips and Microsoft will be showcasing two works-in-progress born of their collaboration: integration of Philips VISICU’s eICU Program with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and SharePoint 2010 Beta; and Philips IntelliVue XDS, which is being adapted to run on Windows 7.

The Philips VISICU eICU Program is an integrated healthcare solution for remote, 24-hour monitoring of critically ill patients. Philips, in collaboration with Microsoft, is showcasing a conceptual Critical Care Analytics Portal designed to support executive decision-making.

Deborah DiSanzo, CEO of healthcare informatics and patient monitoring at Philips Healthcare, said: “We are driving towards a significant paradigm shift from, on the one hand, simply reporting healthcare analytics to, on the other hand, creating systems which actually provide access to health information when and where it is needed. Philips and Microsoft are in a position to work together for the betterment of the healthcare system by effectively helping to close the healthcare technology loop.”

Tim Smokoff, general manager of worldwide health at Microsoft, said: “Information is only as powerful as the ability to share it among those that play an integral role in patient care. This collaboration is a step toward integrating different sources of information, and then providing actionable knowledge in clear, useful formats that suit the needs of the different people who are working to improve care at the point of care.”