Cognizant partners with Philips to build custom apps for health organizations | ZDNet

Health technology company Philips and IT services provider Cognizant are partnering to build customized applications for organizations in the health sector, the companies announced Thursday. The partnership reflects the challenge within the health industry to fully leverage the growing amount of data available. 

The new partnership is aimed at serving healthcare providers, researchers within the life sciences, biopharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, and patients. Cognizant will help organizations build, deploy and operate custom applications on Philips HealthSuite. 

The HealthSuite is a platform for securely storing health data and applying data analytics and AI to it. It’s based on Amazon Web Services and currently integrated with more than 100 kinds of medical devices. 

Cognizant will help healthcare providers leverage the platform to monitor patients outside of traditional settings and give patients a way to learn about their health. They’ll help  biopharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers build applications to use advanced analytics to guide clinical development decisions. The IT services company will help life sciences firms use HealthSuite for remote patient monitoring and decentralized clinical trials. 

“Despite advances, patients and clinicians still face a fragmented technology and data landscape that holds back innovative healthcare services which improve care quality and the human experience,” Shez Partovi, Royal Philips’ chief innovation & strategy officer, said in a statement. “Philips is committed to driving the digital transformation of healthcare. Partnering with Cognizant’s experienced digital engineering teams will accelerate the adoption of solutions built on Philips HealthSuite, delivering digital solutions across the healthcare continuum in a secure and compliant manner, and ultimately helping guide better health decisions for patients.”

Over the last five years, Philips has turned its focus strictly to healthcare technology and now has three business core business segments in this area: Personal Health, Diagnosis & Treatment and Connected Care. The company brought in  €19.5 billion in 2020 and expects to grow around 5 percent to 6 percent each year through 2025. By Philips’ own estimate, the overall health technology market is expected to grow around 4 percent each year.