(Philips Health Watch, one of many devices relevant to its collaboration with Pegasystems. Source: Philips.)

Royal Philips (Amsterdam), a global provider of health technology, and Pegasystems Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.) are collaborating to enable managed care service providers and accountable care organizations to better leverage connected devices and health data to personalize care and improve health outcomes, the firms announced this morning at the annual Pegaworld conference in Las Vegas. Philips’ Jeroen Tas, CEO, Connected Care and Health Informatics, Philips, and Pegasystems’ CEO Alan Trefler will deliver opening keynote presentations at Pegaworld today starting at 11:00 a.m. Eastern, and available in livestream or by replay by clicking here.

The collaboration centers on the integration of Pega Care Management Application with the Philips HealthSuite Cloud platform. The combined Pega and Philips capabilities take advantage of wearable devices and medical IoT devices to enable caregivers to remotely manage care with connected health applications to provide immediate access to a patient’s health status, the vendors says. The resulting information will give clinicians the ability to identify potential health issues in the moment and coordinate a timely response to intervene and improve adherence to personal care plans, according to a statement from the vendors.

“We’re entering a new paradigm in healthcare, one in which devices and wearables can help care teams extend their services well beyond the doctor’s office,” comments Pegasystems’ Trefler. “By working with Philips to leverage its deep expertise in connected health and by connecting our solutions to the HealthSuite Cloud platform, we enable new levels of collaboration across the entire health continuum to deliver differentiated personalized care that improves patient outcomes.”

Holistic View of Patient Health

These new connected health solutions, which Pegasystems expects to be generally available later this year, are designed to support care managers and insurers to increase care quality and decrease hospital readmissions while also lowering total costs. Through the combination of clinical data, industry best-practice care guidelines and advanced analytics, Pega Care Management will provide a patient’s health management team with a holistic view of the patient’s health and care plans so they can extend personalized managed care in any setting, from ambulatory and acute to the home and on the go, the vendor says.

In addition to the presentations by Tas and Tefler, Philips and Pegasystems will demonstrate their integrated care concepts at Pegaworld, using evidence-based chronic care guidelines and the new FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard. Pegasystems offers the example of a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patient on inhaler treatment being given the ability to self-monitor oxygen levels using a wearable device. The resulting health data is shared with the patient’s care team in real time so that they can quickly respond.

Coordinated Care Across Patient Care Teams

Pegasystems characterizes Pega Care Management Application as enabling healthcare providers and insurers to manage and coordinate care across patient care teams. The vendor says the solution is further enhanced by joining the Philips Cloud platform ecosystem, which provides connectivity to millions of connected health devices, integration with hospital EMR and clinical systems, advanced predictive analytics, and secured cloud storage and sharing of longitudinal patient data, according to a Pegasystems statement.

“It is great to see leading companies like Pegasystems joining the growing momentum of the Philips HealthSuite Cloud platform network to enhance care beyond the hospital walls,” comments Philips’ Tas. “The collaboration of Philips and Pega is a next step to deliver successful and efficient population health management to unify the silos of personal health and clinical data so every member of a person’s health care team can take advantage of data in the context of the patient’s broader health.”

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