OREANDA-NEWS. February 10, 2016. Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG; AEX: PHIA) today announced the growing adoption of its predictive analytics engine CareSage with health organizations across the U.S. such as Henry Ford Health System, a leading comprehensive, integrated U.S. health system, with whom the company recently signed an agreement. Using Philips’ Lifeline technology, CareSage enables hospitals and health systems to manage their patient populations by proactively identifying at-risk patients most likely to need an emergency transport in the next 30 days, helping prevent avoidable hospitalizations.

Since CareSage’s commercial availability in the second half of last year, eight U.S. health systems have signed on to support an initial population of 6,500 elderly patients per month. Next to Henry Ford Health System (Michigan), these systems include Roper St. Francis (South Carolina), Peninsula Regional Medical Center (Maryland), Carondelet Home Care (Kansas/Missouri), Delmar Gardens Home Care (Missouri) and Presence Care @ Home (Illinois).

CareSage provides analysis of real-time and historical data from health care providers and Philips Lifeline’s AutoAlert technology to focus on senior patients when they return home after a hospital visit or home health care period. The predictive analytics tool identifies patients most likely to need to be transported to a hospital within the next 30 days so clinicians can provide timely intervention. Part of Philips’ continued effort to support this population, CareSage is being built on Philips’ cloud-based HealthSuite digital platform, a multivendor, open and scalable Platform-as-a-Service that supports the development of connected health solutions.

“Health systems continue to face increased pressures to reduce costs, especially within a growing senior patient population living with multiple chronic conditions that affect their lives and the lives of their caregivers each day,” said Jeroen Tas, CEO, Connected Care and Health Informatics, Philips. “The enthusiasm we are seeing for CareSage demonstrates the commitment of these leading health care systems to better monitor and care for elderly patients. Our forty years of experience in supporting seniors combined with our deep knowledge in advanced analytics for patient monitoring has enabled us to offer a powerful tool that provides hospitals, health systems and clinicians with actionable insights to help improve patient outcomes.”

“As we continue to work towards improving patient care, addressing the hospitalization rates of our at-risk elderly patients is a critical step,” said Mary Hagen, e-Home Care Supervisor at Henry Ford Health System. “Working with Philips to implement predictive analytics into the home monitoring services that we offer our patients will help identify those in need of early intervention and improve how we deliver care to help patients stay out of the hospital and live independently.”

Seniors use more health care per capita than any other group [1], and this will only increase as the population grows – currently 5 percent of patients account for 50 percent of Medicare health care spending [2]. By 2060, the number of Americans aged 65 and older is expected to be 98 million [3], and poor care transitions are a top cause of unnecessary readmissions, emergency department visits and hospitalizations of seniors. As the industry evolves toward a value-based care model, health systems are looking to use predictive analytics to extend care to the home while reducing costs and readmissions and providing better patient outcomes for this high cost group.

Philips will be showcasing its CareSage technology at booth #3416 at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2016 Annual Meeting and Exhibition, taking place Feb. 29 – March 4, at the Sands Expo in Las Vegas, NV. For updates on Philips’ presence at HIMSS, follow @PhilipsLiveFrom and visit www.philips.com/HIMSS.

For more information about CareSage, please visit: www.lifeline.philips.com/business/caresage.

[1] “Medicare Spending By Year,” US Government Spending, http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/medicare_spending_by_year 
[2]  United States Government Accountability Office
[3] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention