ITEA Success story

Smart, smarter, smartest… the Philips route to superlative healthcare solutions

In conversation with Casper Garos, Frank van der Linden and Herman Stegehuis

Recent decades have witnessed phenomenal advances in healthcare. But the combination of longevity, chronic disease and costs have made the need for smart solutions paramount. The growing presence of healthcare in the RD&I landscape has been making its mark within the ITEA Community, so time to reflect on the input and impact of Philips over the past seven or so years. This brief retrospective of Philips' very active involvement in the (smart) healthcare projects within the ITEA Community bears testimony to the key role it has played and continues to play, one that benefits business, users, knowledge and, most important of all, patients.

"As global leader in medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, Philips' healthcare innovation revolves around improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare through a focus on continuum of care, central to which is a patient-centric approach. In combining its expertise in medical technology with the clinical know-how of its customers to produce innovative solutions, the focus lies on two main domains: imaging and IT architecture. Herman Stegehuis explains: "All kinds of imaging techniques are applied to provide support during diagnostics and therapy while IT architecture is geared towards the communication aspects, such as gathering and integrating data so that the information can be used efficiently and effectively. These two domains, which often overlap and interconnect, enable patients to be treated - through minimally invasive surgery or tele-medicine, for instance - that would not otherwise be able to be treated, shorten hospitalisation and rehabilitation time for patients, make procedures and processes more efficient and reduce the escalating costs of healthcare." Both domains are evident in the ITEA projects that Philips has led in recent years.

Maximum impact, minimal invasion

Going back five years or so, to the completed ITEA 2 EDAFMIS project, Frank van der Linden reveals how important a role information technology could play in the modern operating theatre, especially to meet the growing demand for minimally invasive surgery. "The problem was that surgical operations were not well supported by IT; too many independent systems were trying to communicate with each other. On top of that, surgeons did not have access to modern IT solutions such as decision-support systems." EDAFMIS brought together a group of healthcare equipment companies in the Netherlands with a major computer software company in Turkey to change this and develop a new generation of medical operation support systems. The result was a software package for imaging and intervention that enabled easy interoperability and user interaction, providing a minimal operation cockpit that supports automation and navigation, and ultimately a marked improvement in quality and speed of treatment in operating theatres.

"I think when we did the first procedure with EP navigator here it was like a new dimension, because there was so much new information… 3D information adds a certain level of confidence when you do mapping and ablation procedures."

Dr. M. V. Orlov, St Elizabeth's Medical Center, Boston, USA
On EP-cockpit (EDAFMIS)

High-performance computing reduces healthcare costs

Finishing at more or less the same time as the EDAFMIS project, and also coordinated by Van der Linden, the HiPiP project aimed at developing affordable high-tech medical image-processing applications based on high performance computing multicore, multiprocessor technologies. "Real-time image processing has become increasingly important in healthcare," Van der Linden stresses, "particularly for minimally-invasive operations, automated screening and medical research." With massive amounts of data to be processed, the key was to use parallel processing technologies to make faster use of this information - ideally in real time - especially for applications of faster 2-, 3- and 4-D - space and time - images like detailed brain imaging, minimally invasive surgery, real-time radiation therapy planning, mass screening for early cancer detection and faster operation of highresolution transmission electron microscopes. HiPiP has not only increased speeds but also improved real-time aspects of multicore processing - particularly the predictability of images being shown in a very short time with little variation in the time taken to process the images. This now enables a doctor to see an image taken a tenth of a second earlier, allowing much improved hand-eye co-ordination when using advanced image processing during surgery. The significant progress achieved in the ITEA 2 project enabled four of the partners to launch a series of different products on the market in 2012 based on HiPiP results. Furthermore, the project has boosted Europe's position on the global stage with a greater understanding of real-time parallel processing.

Healthcare dilemmas in an ageing population

Rising healthcare costs and shortage of personnel present real challenges and healthcare innovation is being pushed to the limit to come up with suitable clinical and technological solutions. Care4Me (project leader Frenk Sloff) set out to improve quality and productivity in healthcare using advanced medical imaging and decision-support methods with the ultimate goal of developing clinical prototypes for early diagnosis of cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases connected to hospital information systems in a new systems architecture. The consortium involved large and small medical equipment manufacturers, research institutes and academic hospitals and its main outcome can be summarised as an open and dynamic hospital-wide, service-oriented architecture that integrates models of anatomy and pathology, computer-aided detection and diagnosis components as well as decisionsupport tools. Care4Me helped to strengthen the competitive position of Europe, especially its consortium partners, and the exploitation potential for cardiology tools and products and fast exploitation of the results was evident in a number of software packages, including QCA-3d by Pie Medical, Qivius by Medis and ClarityIQ by Philips Healthcare. Ultimately, of course, it is the patient that benefits - through better care and lower healthcare costs.

"This dose reduction is, at least in my mind, a real quantum leap in reducing the dose and improving thereby the procedure both for the patient and for us. I think it's really fantastic."

Dr. T. Andersson, Interventional Neuroradiologist, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden
On Clarity-IQ (Care4Me)