Amazon, Philips Partner to Unite Medical Data in the Cloud

By HospiMedica International staff writers
Posted on 21 Oct 2015

Amazon (Seattle, WA, USA) and Royal Philips (Philips; Amsterdam, The Netherlands) will work together to connect hundreds of millions of devices and sensors to the Internet of Things (IoT).

Through Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Philips HealthSuite digital platform will collect, aggregate, and analyze data from a variety of apps, medical device systems, and electronic medical records (EMRs), as part of its strategy to enable an ecosystem for connected and personalized digital health solutions. The connection to the AWS IoT platform will not only make it easier for devices to connect to AWS services, it will also expand the connectivity and capabilities and services of the HealthSuite digital platform.

Image: Schematic of the HealthSuite digital platform running on AWS (Photo courtesy of Royal Philips).

The HealthSuite digital platform includes a secure device cloud that is already managing more than seven million connected devices and sensors; the integration with AWS IoT will provide a platform with a future proof, secure, and scalable environment that is designed to create added value for customers, in terms of smarter and more personalized solutions for healthier living and care coordination, and will allow new products (such as medical alert systems and baby monitors) to grow smarter over time.

The partnership confirms Philips commitment to informatics, which it expects to be the core of its ongoing HealthTech refocus. This follows the September 2015 launch of a combined diabetes app and EMR system designed with Salesforce (San Francisco, CA, USA) to offer integrated data, access and direction for patients, and their various healthcare providers, which also runs on the HealthSuite platform. Philips recently also rolled out a line-up of smart, connected consumer-oriented medical devices, including a watch, blood pressure cuff, scale, and a thermometer.

“The digital health revolution and the power of the Internet of Things offer tremendous opportunities to positively transform how care is delivered,” said Jeroen Tas, CEO of Philips Healthcare Informatics, Solutions and Services. “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.”

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