Philips and salesforce.com are entering a strategic alliance to deliver an open, cloud-based healthcare platform, leveraging Philips’ positions in medical technology and salesforce.com’s leadership in enterprise cloud computing. Patient relationship management will be at the center of the envisioned platform, allowing caregivers to collaborate closely in support of their patients. The platform will enable medical device and data interoperability -- the collection of data and subsequent analysis to enhance clinical decision making.

The collaboration has already resulted in two clinical applications to be launched on the new platform later this summer: "Philips eCareCoordinator" and "Philips eCareCompanion". These care collaboration applications will allow the care team to monitor patients with chronic conditions in their homes and will facilitate Philips’ Hospital to Home clinical programs, such as Banner iCare, being piloted at Banner Health, an accountable care organization in Arizona, USA.

Philips and salesforce.com envision that apps will cover the continuum of care: from self-care and prevention, to diagnosis and treatment through recovery and wellness. The envisioned platform, based on the Salesforce Platform, will enable collaboration and workflow, as well as integration of data from multiple sources worldwide, including electronic medical records, diagnostic and treatment information obtained through Philips’ imaging equipment, monitoring equipment, personal devices and technologies like Apple’s HealthKit. Moreover, the cloud-based platform is designed to be scalable with built-in privacy and data security. Both Philips and Salesforce.com foresee that the platform will utilize Philips’ clinical data stores and medical device interoperability. It is intended to be open to developers and is expected to result in an ecosystem of partners creating applications.