Philips innovation facilitates development of wireless home healthcare devices

Eindhoven, The Netherlands – Philips Applied Technologies, part of Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) has launched the market’s first ZigBee Health Care ‘reference design’. Device manufacturers can develop a range of wireless telehealth devices, fast and cost-efficiently, for home patient and fitness monitoring, such as blood pressure meters, heart rate monitors, respiratory peak flow meters, and medical alarms. These devices can help people with complex, chronic health conditions to stay in their own home – avoiding a nursing home or other residential facility.

“We are very excited with the development of this new platform. It enables medical device manufacturers to develop solutions that help and stimulate people live healthier and happier independent lives. With the use of the Zigbee reference platform, data captured by these devices can be safely and robustly transmitted wirelessly to a computer or home hub device that stores the data or sends it on for remote monitoring by a clinician who could intervene should the data exhibit unexpected trends,” says Paul van Schendel, Senior Vice President at Philips Applied Technologies.
             
The platform offers all the communication components needed to make a complete Home Use Medical Device, including an embedded hub ‘manager’. Hubs can be designed to integrate data from many sensors, and either store the data locally, or connect across a remote monitoring system to offsite servers. The data can be aggregated, processed and distributed securely at any of a number of different levels to form part of a telehealth system.

ZigBee is already being widely used in applications like home security, consumer electronics, telecommunications and smart energy systems. The recent ZigBee Health Care specification now also adds medical devices to the growing list of possibilities for ZigBee Wireless Sensor Networks. The small footprint ZigBee design connects to portable, mobile and fixed products, eliminating physical cables like Ethernet. Devices have very low power consumption for long battery life of up to several years, depending on the device itself, with the mesh network design ensuring reliable coverage over a wide area. The new platform will bring economies of scale to produce Home Use Medical Devices. It will also free device manufacturers from having to learn the technical ZigBee specifications, so they can instead concentrate on their own specialization to make best use of their medical expertise.

Philips Applied Technologies offers contract innovation services to bring ideas to market, fast and efficiently.
For extra info, please also go to: http://www.zigbee.org/Markets/ZigBeeHealthCare/Overview.aspx

For further information, please contact:
Carlo van Pelt
Philips Applied Technologies / Communications
Tel: +31 40 2748882
E-mail: carlo.van.pelt@philips.com
 

About Royal Philips Electronics
Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is a diversified health and well-being company, focused on improving people’s lives through timely innovations. As a world leader in healthcare, lifestyle and lighting, Philips integrates technologies and design into people-centric solutions, based on fundamental customer insights and the brand promise of “sense and simplicity”. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips employs more than 116,000 employees in more than 60 countries worldwide. With sales of EUR 23 billion in 2009, the company is a market leader in cardiac care, acute care and home healthcare, energy efficient lighting solutions and new lighting applications, as well as lifestyle products for personal well-being and pleasure with strong leadership positions in flat TV, male shaving and grooming, portable entertainment and oral healthcare. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter.