Philips 2012 Annual Report Download - page 17

3 Our strategy in action 3 - 3
Annual Report 2012 17
Transforming critical care
delivery
Philips works closely with health systems to improve quality, costs and access to care
across multiple patient settings. By leveraging our leadership in healthcare technology, we
are transforming critical care for war veterans.
In the US, the Veterans Integrated Service Network
(VISN) 23 is one of 21 health systems operated by the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to provide a broad
spectrum of medical care to the nation’s war veterans.
Serving more than 400,000 veterans in ten Midwestern
states, VISN 23, like other health systems across the
country, faces the ongoing challenge of providing
accessible, quality care while lowering costs – against the
backdrop of a critical care resource shortage.
Nowhere are these issues more evident than in an
intensive care unit (ICU), where at-risk patients require
specialized care, immediate attention and constant
monitoring. It is also where a vast amount of patient data is
generated. The typical ICU patient is often connected to
more than a half dozen bedside medical devices from
different manufacturers that run on different software. To
make the best informed decisions, clinicians need to be
able to view all of the data coming from these devices and
in different formats clearly and in one place. Yet for many
healthcare facilities, the process of integrating, aggregating
and analyzing this amount of data remains tedious and
time-consuming.
A seamlessly integrated solution
When VISN 23 outlined its initial mission to improve
critical care delivery across seven of its medical centers,
Philips Healthcare immediately recognized the need to
bring together two different technology platforms in
patient monitoring and clinical informatics in a single,
seamless solution that could be delivered using innovative
telehealth technology.