AWS is How: Philips makes medical diagnostics accessible to more people

About half the world’s population has no access to basic healthcare. There are a number of reasons for this, including poverty, language barriers, and geography. Even in the United States, millions of people—particularly in rural areas—live more than 30 minutes away from the nearest hospital. This makes it difficult for them to get critical care and routine diagnostics, like pre-natal ultrasounds.

Philips is helping to close this care gap with mobile technology, like its Lumify ultrasound system, that helps medical professionals serve patients outside hospital walls. Lumify is a portable, app-based ultrasound solution that is compatible with smartphones and other Android and iOS handheld devices. To use Lumify, healthcare workers with internet access simply download the Lumify app from the Google Play or Apple App Store. They then plug the Lumify transducer—the small wand that gathers image data—into their device where they can see a clear ultrasound picture. With a weight of about half a pound (or 227g), healthcare providers can easily take Lumify almost anywhere.

Lumify supports a number of imaging scenarios, including heart, lung, abdomen, and OB/Gyn examinations. Moreover, Philips has brought the Reacts collaboration platform to Lumify, creating the world’s first integrated tele-ultrasound solution. Reacts, which is HIPAA and PIPEDA compliant, enables Lumify users around the world to collaborate virtually in real time by sharing their device cameras, voices, and ultrasound exams. This means that doctors in different locations can work together from their mobile devices to diagnose and treat patients. They can also share high-quality, real-time ultrasound images with patients’ family members who can’t be physically present for the examination.

Lumify runs on the Philips HealthSuite Platform (HSP), built on AWS. With HealthSuite, Philips has created a single architecture that consolidates patient records, data from wearable and home-based remote medical-monitoring equipment, and information from insurance companies and healthcare organizations. “Hospitals and healthcare systems have traditionally had very disparate architectures,” says Jan van Zoest, chief architect at Philips. “They often face issues with sharing of data, both internally and externally. This complicates improvement of care, reduction of costs and development of innovative software solutions.” AWS helps Philips break down data silos—to speed innovation, simplify security and compliance, increase efficiency, and pave the way to better healthcare solutions.

“With its broad set of cloud services, global reach, strong security tools, and unlimited scalability, AWS helps us differentiate the HealthSuite Digital Platform by enabling us to provide exceptional data security and privacy off the shelf for our customers around the world,” says Dale Wiggins, Philips HSP vice president and general manager. “In this capacity, Philips furthers its commitment to optimize workflows that put the patient front and center and turn the most defining moments in healthcare into a clear care pathway with predictable outcomes tailored for every patient.”

Over a dozen AWS services support the Philips HealthSuite. These include Amazon Simple Storage Solution (Amazon S3) for data storage with industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance; Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which provides secure, resizable compute capacity; AWS IoT Core, which makes it easy to connect devices securely to the cloud; Amazon Kinesis to collect, process, and analyze real-time streaming data; and Amazon API Gateway to create, monitor, and better secure APIs at any scale.

“One of our main focuses up to now has been moving data to the cloud,” says Wiggins. “This allows us to look at novel ways of putting that data to work to help customers improve, such as by adding machine learning and other AI integrations.”

You can see how Philips Lumify helps patients share their ultrasound experience with their families in the newest “AWS is how” ad. Visit Healthcare & Life Sciences on AWS to learn more about how AWS helps healthcare organizations increase the pace of innovation, unlock data insights, and personalize the healthcare journey.