Photos by AC Brizuela
Access to quality healthcare is a fundamental human right, but unfortunately, the Philippines’ healthcare system is confronted with resource and financial constraints, affordability of healthcare services, uneven ratio of patients to clinicians, and ancient health systems with limited connectivity. According to the Department of Health, the ratio of available hospital bed vis a vis the population is at a dismal 10 beds per 10,000 people – definitely below the recommended ratio by the World Health Organization.
Royal Philips, health technology company, has taken the initiative to address the problem of quality healthcare in the Philippines by providing integrated solutions to the healthcare industry. Last June 10, Philips shared its HealthTech vision through a Philips Hospital Simulation event held at Crowne Plaza Manila Galleria and invited clinicians to attend a lecture and experience a simulation set-up which included an emergency room, an ambulance, an Intensive Care Unit (ICU), an operating room, a public and a private ward, a maternal room, a provincial hospital and a Cardiology clinic.
During the simulation, each room showcased real-time hospital flow that highlighted challenges faced by patients and clients. Philips demonstrated how issues like efficiency can be addressed, and how to achieve better patient outcomes and reduce clinicians’ workload. “We have a clinical expert delivering on some of the challenges in the hospital and we will be linking this in this hospital to show how those challenges can be addressed. It is a combination of both the clinical as well as the actual practice, that’s why we name it ‘Turning Vision to Reality’,” explains Sharad Jinghan, product manager for Patient Monitoring and Cardiac Care at Philips Healthcare.
The mock hospital highlighted innovative solutions that include the Intellivue Guardian Solution which helps detect significant deviations in a patient’s vital signs readings and automatically verifies the accuracy of data by performing reassurance measurements at customized intervals. An early Warning Scoring helps accurately detect if a patient is at risk of deterioration, thereby helping avoid costly transfers or re-admission to the ICU. The system detects significant deviations in a patient’s vital signs readings, and automatically verifies the accuracy of the data by performing reassurance measurements at customized intervals.
There is also an Intellivue Cableless Measurement Solutions that provides respiration rate, Normal Blood Pressure (NBP), the saturation of arterial blood with oxygen (Sp02) and pulse rate. All these improve monitoring and transmission of data to an IntelliVue Guardian Software at a nurse’s station PC that help clinicians identify early on if a condition has deteriorated. The Intellivue MX40 on the other hand is a wearable patient monitor that can wirelessly monitor patients even if they move around the hospital. IntelliSpace ECG meantime provides clinicians access to ECG reports from multiple vendors and modalities. It can store records from non-Philips cardiographs, making them available for smartphone viewing through 3G.
“We are trying to improve how technology can help patient management to step into preventive or early diagnosis,” says Johan Vooren, vice president and general manager for Philips Health Systems Southeast Asia. During the event, he discussed how the trend in healthcare has shifted, with focus on holistic healthcare by preventing people from getting ill, and when they are sick, ensure better patient outcomes by offering an integrated approach from healthy living up to home care.
In the Philippines, there’s still a big gap in tertiary and primary health care “especially in the rural area,” shares Malone Guevarra, general manager for Philips Health Systems in the Philippines. “What we see is that in terms of accessibility, (there) is a problem and partnering with an NGO and a clinical expert in mini clinics can address this gap,” he says.
Currently, Philips is “partnering with some international NGOs for a pilot project that will take flight in Tacloban and see if this could scale up in addressing gaps in rural areas,” Guevarra reveals. – Bernadette Andrea Catalan