Philips and Qualcomm have announced a strategic technology collaboration to create connected health solutions across the whole spectrum of the healthcare industry.

Philips’ leadership in connected health informatics and regulated healthcare cloud data management and analytics will combine with Qualcomm’s subsidiary Qualcomm Life and its expertise in secure, medical-grade device connectivity and integration.

Qualcomm Life’s 2net Platform will serve as the medical device connectivity solution for Philips HealthSuite, a cloud-enabled health ecosystem of devices, apps and digital tools.

This will provide Philips users access to a wide array of connected medical devices, including medication dispensers, medical-grade biosensors, ventilators, blood pressure monitors, point-of-care self-tests, and blood glucose meters.

HealthSuite users will also be able to customise and scale connected care programs, add additional medical devices and gain a more complete patient profile over longer periods of time.

Qualcomm Life will leverage the data aggregation and analytics capabilities provided by HealthSuite, giving its customers direct access to build applications, integrate with electronic health record systems, store data, run analytics and manage device and system authorisation and consent.

The first fruits of this partnership will be demonstrated when Philips’ Trilogy ventilator family and Care Orchestrator care management applications go live.

“As the home is fast becoming a viable care setting, care providers, home health agencies, and other institutions are increasingly using connected care to reduce emergency care and readmissions of patients with chronic diseases,” according to Jeroen Tas, CEO of connected care and health informatics at Philips.

“Patient self-management combined with 24/7 connectivity to a care network is an emerging model that enables scalable chronic disease management for patients and providers.”

Rick Valencia, president of Qualcomm Life added: “We are thrilled to be working with Philips, enabling Qualcomm Life to grow its ecosystem and ultimately serve as the underpinning of the Internet of Medical Things.”

Such partnerships will become more important for Australians in the future as our population ages and greater strains are placed on our healthcare system, adding fuel to the argument that connected health systems can ease the burden.

CSIRO was recently able to prove the benefits of connected health devices for chronic and elderly patients in a 12-month study that was recently completed, indicating a potential saving of $3 billion to the healthcare industry in the country if devices like these are more widely used.