Philips At HIMSS22: Informatics Is Taking Pressure Off Providers

Workplace pressures are hitting hospitals and providers still feeling the residual effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Informatics and connected technologies can take much of the strain, said Royal Philips’ connected care chief Roy Jakobs.

HIMSS, the annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society meeting, was back “in person” in March 2022, after two years of virtual presentations. Much of the meeting, in Orlando, FL, was additionally run on a virtual track for those unexpectedly caught out by the Omicron variant or simply not wanting to risk the airport crush too early in this post-pandemic phase.

Talking to physical conference attendees via Zoom calls through the digital program, there was a palpable sense of relief that delegates were finally able to be “back in the room.” Altogether, at the Orange County Convention Center and on HIMSS Digital22, some 29,000 people took part in the four-day event.

Speaking to In Vivo, Royal Philips’ chief business leader of connected health, Roy Jakobs, said HIMSS22 was an opportunity to reset after two years in which the industry gained a lot of insight into the need for long term health care change. Much has been learnt in the interim about the technology solutions that will support the transition from hospital to home, among other needs, he said.

Philips plans to be a stronger partner to providers for both in-hospital and at-home care. In terms of importance, this ambition ranks alongside the transition to virtual care, both in and outside the hospital for Philips’ connected care business. The company’s HIMSS agenda included co-creating roadmaps, servicing long-term agreements and partnering with providers on their evolving operational needs.

Philips’ chief business leader of precision diagnosis, Kees Wesdorp, was also at HIMSS22. "That’s a sign of the times," said Jakobs: HIMSS was conceived as a forum for informatics specialists, “but today, informatics is part of everything we do, and applies to every part of the Philips suite.” Hospital chief information officers and chief medical officers now ask about solutions across the health care continuum  ̶  in and outside of the hospital – including diagnosis, treatment and monitoring.

Workforce Pressures

The currnet number one concern for hospitals is how to deal with staff shortages brought about by workplace pressures and exacerbated by the pandemic. The current wave of COVID-19 is hitting staff coverage severely. It is impeding health care providers in their delivery of both COVID- and non-COVID care. (Also see "Ensuring The Next Generation Of Health Care Professionals: Still An Unmet Need" - In Vivo, 19 Mar, 2020.)

This was not a temporary or incidental problem, Jakobs warned, rather a structural challenge. And one made worse by the exodus of health care staff who can no longer cope with the pressures they have been under. “With fewer hands available, how do you set about organizing care delivery in a different manner?” he asked. 

“Technology is one thing, but without adoption and change management, transformations cannot work.” – Roy Jakobs

The situation calls for a “reinvention” of health care. HIMSS22 was timely, in that everyone seemed to be crying out about staff shortages, said Jakobs, who suspected the answer to their needs would be another wave of technology adoption to support both operations management and clinical care needs. “Virtual care is coming into its own again,” he said.

Three Concerns For Providers

Staff shortages is one of the main concerns Philips hears customers airing.

The second is on data and data security, specifically the need for secure platforms to be able to use and manage data in an appropriate manner. The cloud-based Philips HealthSuite Platform (recognized in the 2021 Gartner Market Guide for Digital Health Platforms) is seen by Jakobs as a fundamental building block for the future to help improve the delivery of care.

HealthSuite serves as the foundation of Philips’ informatics innovation. It is claimed to be one of the few independent platforms built for health care that can deal with analytics.

Gartner Soundbites

A Philips roundtable at HIMSS22 on the shape of health care to come was addressed by the Gartner research consultancy. Among its assertions and predictions were that:

• Over the next three years, 40% of hospital providers will shift 20% of their beds to the home;

• Cybersecurity is the No. 1 priority for industry in 2022. Some 75% of the top 20 life science companies will experience significant business losses due to cybersecurity weaknesses within the next three years;

• In the shift to virtual care, public health will be compelled to address the “digital divide,” which is claimed to be responsible for 5% of global deaths; and

• In the US in the coming three years, 10 major employers will harness contracts with health care ecosystems to manage low acuity and chronic care management.

The third customer concern is how they need to manage the high volumes of different applications and systems they are now faced with. As whole health systems digitize, the requirement for extra validation of workflows increases. But it is a complex need. “They are scrambling a bit, with 300-500 applications per hospital in order to provide care for all services,” said Jakobs.

Finding themselves in unaccustomed territory, they are looking for partners that can help them consolidate, or “platform-ize,” over the long-term. The interoperability this provides is important, as users do not want to be locked in with just one supplier, but want a range of choices, said Jakobs. “We help them gel the pieces together to get the most out of it, and can also collect the insights to drive productivity.”

Among other solutions the company was showcasing at HIMSS22 was Philips Interoperability Solutions (formerly Forcare), a cloud-enabled health IT platform that facilitates the exchange and management of data across health care players. It also profiled the Philips Enterprise Performance Analytics (PerformanceBridge) platform for real-time insights in radiology and cardiology. This can leverage the workforce better, enhance efficiencies and improve the patient experience.

Going Beyond The Transaction

Jakobs stressed the need, as a provider partner, to go beyond the transaction alone. Philips has a role to set out the transformational journey a hospital or provider system needs to go through, he said. The service element becomes much more significant in such partnerships.

A provider system’s digital journey will focus, for instance, on getting workflows adopted, training nurses on the wards and ensuring that eICU and bed monitoring systems can deliver the best possible outcomes. “Technology is one thing, but without adoption and change management, transformations cannot work,” said Jakobs.

Three Hits To 2021 Business

Operationally, Philips’ connected care revenues in 2021 (€4.59bn/$5.42bn) were just short of its 2019 levels – the business having seen a huge spike in COVID-affected 2020. The Respironics recall in the second half of last year was the main factor in holding back the financial performance. In 2020, sleep and respiratory made up 49% of divisional sales; in 2021, it was down to 37%.

Philips is in the midst of remediating the recall, and has made "substantial progress” in getting patients identified and producing the units needed for the remediation, said Jakobs. “We want to go faster, but with more than five million units [to remediate] in the market – which is four to five times our annual global CPAP/BiPAP business volume – it’s hard to do that in just a few months.” (Also see "Philips CEO Finds Comfort In Solid Product Demand As Triple Headwind Blows In" - In Vivo, 3 Feb, 2022.)

The company has engaged with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) throughout, and intensified its communications to patients, telling some that it may be some months yet before their replacement device arrives. “We still plan to finalize the recall by end of this year, taking into account COVID and the supply chain situation,” he said.

Jakobs reported positive news on the latest round of VOC testing and said further testing of particulates would be done. The company hopes to report back in the second quarter.

Regarding the €70m provision made in Q4 2021 by the connected care division for two other product recalls, the products in question have not yet been identified publicly. Philips remains in dialog about the remediation efforts with the FDA, Jakobs noted at HIMSS22.

Being very chip dependent, Philips has been hit significantly by the current component supply shortages. The company is working with chip producers to secure a fair allocation, and is redesigning its products where possible to work around the problems.

“We have the strongest order book in the history of connected care, but it is currently very hard to fulfil and convert the orders,” said Jakobs. The current issues are impacting the top and bottom lines at connected care.

Lingering COVID is also having a global impact on medtechs. But taking a positive angle, Jakobs noted that the huge backlog of care will still need to be provided at some point. Hospitals are reflecting on how they can catch up on missed procedures in elective care, but they too want to catch on their facilities expansion plans. “People are seeing the value of diagnostics, and that is increasing,” Jakobs said.

Customers are increasingly asking for command centers that provide insights and can interpret data in cases, say, where a radiologist is not present onsite. Teleradiology has never been more in demand. Informatics is helping hospitals increase their diagnostic productivity and allowing health systems to orchestrate care across hospitals that have multiple sites.

Outpatient demand also growing and ambulatory diagnostics are beginning to take a bigger share of the whole diagnostics chain.