Philips Cardiovascular Health Management Portal: Interconnected Data Driving Efficiency and Cost Reduction

With sustained economic growth and the continuous improvement of residents’ living standards, the incidence of cardiovascular diseases in China has exhibited a trend characterized by “high incidence and younger onset”: a high disease incidence rate coupled with a trend toward younger patient demographics. Consequently, how to effectively prevent cardiovascular diseases, enhance efficiency during diagnosis and treatment, and optimize postoperative health management to reduce readmission rates have become topics of common concern among healthcare professionals, experts, and leaders in the field of cardiovascular disease.

This article aims to explore how cardiovascular disease diagnosis and treatment institutions and attending physicians can effectively and rapidly enhance their clinical and research capabilities, improve work efficiency, reduce healthcare costs, and better provide medical and health services to patients with cardiovascular diseases.

In the current practice of cardiovascular disease diagnosis and treatment in China, both medical institutions and physicians face three major "pain points":

This comprehensive, end-to-end solution not only begins with the first step in impacting cardiovascular disease—maintaining a healthy lifestyle—but also effectively improves diagnosis and treatment, while extending care to the home setting, thereby significantly enhancing medical efficiency and reducing healthcare costs.

In terms of disease prevention, Philips promotes healthy lifestyle habits and enhances the ability to predict and prevent chronic diseases through a range of wearable digital products.

In diagnosis and treatment, Philips offers a comprehensive product portfolio including ECG machines, ultrasound systems, CT scanners, MR scanners, X-ray systems, and angiography systems, meeting the diverse diagnostic and therapeutic needs of hospitals and physicians.

In the realm of healthcare informatics, Philips has developed specialized medical information systems tailored to the needs of each stage of clinical pathways. These systems assist hospital administrators and healthcare professionals in enhancing management and diagnostic efficiency and quality. By breaking down information silos, Philips integrates and consolidates all data generated by devices and systems throughout the cardiovascular care continuum onto a unified Cardiovascular Health Management Portal. This achieves data interoperability and, leveraging robust professional backend analytics capabilities, establishes a truly comprehensive informatics platform for the cardiovascular field. This platform empowers cardiovascular physicians and healthcare institutions in China to elevate their clinical and research standards through the most effective and efficient means, enabling doctors to work more productively and deliver superior medical and health services to patients.

In the past, data collection and management in clinical diagnosis and treatment processes in China heavily relied on manual methods, with a lack of standardized data formats. Medical institutions specializing in cardiovascular diseases generally lacked advanced information management and data mining systems. This has led to an awkward situation where there is an abundance of "clinical data" but a shortage of "high-quality data suitable for scientific research." Large-scale databases have failed to provide robust data support for clinical research and quality management.

Worse still, workflow data across different departments within the same hospital are neither integrated nor streamed. Clinical systems rely on manual data entry by healthcare professionals, resulting in redundant backups and data scattered across disparate hospital information systems. This lack of consistency complicates modifications to data sources. Moreover, manual data management leads to high error rates and substantial repetitive labor. Due to the shortage of professionals and methodologies specialized in data mining, clinical research efficiency remains low, causing a waste of research funding and human resources.

Among healthcare institutions managing cardiovascular diseases, research collaboration has failed to yield effective results. A mechanism for sharing and incentivizing the use of clinical cardiovascular data services has not yet been established among these institutions, thereby constraining advancements in cardiovascular research and quality management. To rapidly narrow this gap and enhance efficiency, the most effective approach is to fully leverage information technology to ensure timely and effective data collection, management, utilization, and sharing.

Several years ago, drawing on the key technologies and successful experiences of the American College of Cardiology in establishing the National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR), Philips assisted the Chinese Society of Cardiology in building the “China Cardiovascular Clinical Data Service Platform” (NCDR). Leveraging Philips Healthcare’s extensive global expertise in cardiovascular clinical practice and its leading IT capabilities, and aligning with actual market demands in China as well as domestic industry standards, the platform standardizes and structures the entry of preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative data related to cardiovascular diseases, facilitating data sharing and analysis, thereby promoting the establishment of a national-level data collection and sharing platform.

Through data integration with the hospital's clinical systems, supplemented by manual data entry, and in conjunction with the hospital's cardiovascular Clinical Data Repository (CDR)^【1】Direct system integration enables data connectivity and sharing, which has continuously improved the efficiency of diagnosis, treatment, and research for cardiovascular diseases in China, as well as patient health management and quality of care, while overall controlling or reducing medical costs.

[1]: Among the “Top 10 Hospitals for Cardiovascular Disease in China” released by Fudan University, six have already adopted Philips’ cardiovascular IT solutions centered on the Cardiovascular Clinical Data Repository (CDR).

Treating a vast number of cardiovascular patients has enabled physicians to accumulate extensive experience in in-hospital diagnosis and clinical treatment. However, for a long time, clinical practice in the field of cardiovascular disease in China has lacked an effective “post-discharge management” component. As a result, post-discharge rehabilitation outcomes have been less than ideal, with some patients experiencing unnecessary deterioration in their condition, leading to preventable complications and deaths. The persistently high readmission rate has also consumed substantial medical resources.

Based on Philips’ practical experience in the United States, effective postoperative management generally achieves two key outcomes: 1) a reduction in readmission rates, particularly among post-cardiovascular surgery patients, with readmissions decreasing by more than 40%; and 2) a subsequent reduction in hospital healthcare costs by approximately 20%–30%. Given the substantial burden of healthcare costs across various countries, this represents significant economic and social benefits.

Philips and Peking University First Hospital have jointly innovated to research and develop a cardiovascular chronic disease management solution tailored for the “post-discharge management” of patients with cardiovascular diseases, while closely evaluating its clinical effectiveness. By interconnecting hospitals and homes, this system enables hospitals to extend care to discharged patients, improve rehabilitation outcomes, reduce readmission rates, and thereby enhance the overall quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery in the field of cardiovascular diseases.

For hospitals, the system will help physicians better manage patient populations outside the hospital setting by establishing long-term engagement through health education, lifestyle recommendations, and convenient tools. For physicians, the system also enables remote monitoring of patients’ physiological parameters at home, such as blood pressure and heart rhythm, facilitating timely diagnosis and prescription adjustments to prevent disease progression. Furthermore, the system facilitates the collection and analysis of patient data to meet the needs of clinical research. It is designed not only for diagnosed patients but also for high-risk individuals with unhealthy lifestyles or a family history of genetic diseases.

Clinical data generated by this system will be connected via cloud-based servers, enabling interoperability among tertiary hospitals, primary care facilities, and home settings. This allows patients to select healthcare services from institutions at varying levels based on their actual clinical conditions and needs, thereby promoting more rational and efficient utilization of medical resources. Furthermore, the future development of this system will facilitate the collection and analysis of patient data to meet the demands of clinical research.

Philips’ “Post-Discharge Management System,” which incorporates solutions for the management of chronic cardiovascular diseases, will serve as a foundational tool for healthcare systems in managing patients with chronic conditions. By achieving high-level integration of information (data acquisition) and tools, it can truly provide convenient solutions for healthcare professionals and patients, thereby motivating them to actively engage in chronic disease self-management.

The development of the healthcare industry is closely tied to digitalization, with value shifting from hardware to software and services. To fully unlock the value of medical data, Philips has developed the HealthSuite Digital Platform, enabling hospitals and partners to integrate and apply medical data more flexibly. This facilitates the true flow of data within health care, allowing for on-demand, end-to-end health management. The platform aims to bridge emerging “Internet Plus” health industries with traditional medical resources, leveraging vast amounts of consumer-grade health management data for clinical use and laying a solid foundation for an innovative, holistic health ecosystem. Specifically:

Building on the aforementioned three cloud platforms, the Philips Health Data Platform opens its APIs to users and partners, providing an open ecosystem for customers and solution developers. Leveraging these open APIs, the platform supports applications and devices developed by both Philips and third parties, integrating vast amounts of consumer data, imaging records, and patient monitoring data into a robust data foundation. This enables evidence-based clinical research, lays a solid groundwork for innovation in clinical diagnosis and treatment models, and holds the potential to broadly enhance specialized care standards across China.

Traditional healthcare approaches typically focus on patient care. However, with the deep integration of digital cloud platforms into modern healthcare systems, the scope of attention has expanded beyond just patients to encompass a human-centric perspective, covering the entire health care lifecycle of individuals (including patients).

Leveraging its years of expertise and leading technologies in the cardiovascular field, Philips has introduced the “Continuum of Care” concept. By integrating software and hardware through technological innovation, this approach fully capitalizes on the strengths of both domains to achieve seamless interoperability across all stages of care, among various hospital departments, between hospitals, and between hospitals and patients’ homes. This not only assists healthcare professionals in delivering convenient and effective solutions but also motivates patients to actively engage in self-management of chronic diseases, thereby significantly improving and sustaining treatment outcomes for cardiovascular conditions, enhancing hospital operational efficiency, optimizing medical resource utilization, and substantially reducing healthcare costs.