Philips Launches Its First Patient Monitoring System 'Designed For Emerging Markets' In India

Main Category: Medical Devices
Also Included In: IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 18 Jul 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) today announced a series of new portable, compact patient monitors that provides a reliable, yet affordable means to observe and care for patients. Now available to healthcare providers in India, the new Philips SureSigns VM3 is the first Philips patient monitor designed for emerging markets.

With a growing per capita income and adoption of new lifestyles, healthcare services in India are rapidly changing. In order to meet the increasing demand for quality care, people in urban areas have seen the construction of new, state-of-the-art hospitals and associated satellite facilities, while others are increasingly seeking care at smaller nursing homes and clinics. This has fueled the demand for healthcare equipment across segments and the growth of the Indian patient monitoring equipment market is estimated to reach USD 42 million in 2010. Philips plans to garner a market share of 40% by 2010 through its diverse range of patient monitoring equipment.

"The SureSigns VM3 leverages the high-quality platform of Philips' industry leading patient monitoring portfolio," said Anjan Bose, senior director and business head, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, Philips Healthcare India. "Combining advanced software and technology in a compact economical package, the VM3 is the perfect solution for caregivers across the wide variety of clinical environments we see here in India. This launch reaffirms our commitment to the Indian market, leveraging Philips' global expertise to introduce technologically-advanced offerings tailored to this market."

High-end patient monitors are out of reach for many small to mid-sized clinics, forcing doctors and nurses to apply treatment only based on visible symptoms. On occasion, this means they must wait for a patient's condition to deteriorate before changing treatment. With access to more affordable patient monitoring equipment, clinicians have the ability to observe a patient's vital signs and make more informed, timely decisions about patient care.

Built on a strong heritage and industry leadership in patient monitoring, the Philips SureSigns VM3 offers ECG, respiration and pulse oximetry in one user friendly, compact monitor that helps provide quality care in almost any clinical setting. It offers vital signs measurement and monitoring in an easy-to-use system that can be used in various departments throughout the hospital, nursing homes, private practices and rural clinics, as well as ambulances and mobile facilities.

"Philips is known globally for its cutting edge monitoring technology, and the strong after sales support with back-up in India, have made us active users of SureSigns Monitors. Further the monitoring parameters of SureSigns closely relate to the clinical findings, and that speaks highly for the algorithms devised and designed by Philips Healthcare," said Dr. Chandrasekhar, Head Of Department, Anesthesia, Osmania General Hospital, Hyderabad.

Like all other Philips SureSigns products, the VM3 is easy to set up, learn, use, and support, with intuitive navigation and color displays that are bright and easy to read, even in low-light situations. In addition, Philips also launched the SureSigns Vital Signs Viewer (VSV) to complement their entire VM-series patient monitors.

The VSV is an affordable, reliable, and simple way to provide the benefits of central viewing and alarming without the complexity and expense of a traditional PC-based central station. Central viewing and alarming can benefit any care area with a high patient-to-caregiver ratio. Having a clear picture of each patient's status, at a single glance, helps improve patient care and helps relieve stress on nursing staff.

The VSV displays vital signs data and one waveform from up to 12 patient monitors at a time. In fact, with the VSV, customers can add central monitoring for a department for about the cost of a single VM Series monitor.

Philips is a leading supplier of patient monitoring equipment with 38% market-share in 2007 and having installations across India in leading hospitals as well as remote areas. Philips has introduced several new Patient monitoring products in the last six months to further expand its presence in India. These include IntelliVue MP2, IntelliVue X2, IntelliVue MP5, SureSigns series and Avalon FM20 Fetal monitors.

About Royal Philips Electronics

Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is a global leader in healthcare, lighting and consumer lifestyle, delivering people-centric, innovative products, services and solutions through the brand promise of "sense and simplicity". Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips employs approximately 134,200 employees in more than 60 countries worldwide. With sales of EUR 27 billion in 2007, the company is a market leader in medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring systems, energy efficient lighting solutions, as well as lifestyle solutions for personal wellbeing.

About Philips Electronics India Limited

Philips Electronics India Limited, a subsidiary of the Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics, is a leader in Consumer Lifestyle, Healthcare and Lighting Systems. Philips has an unmatched range of internationally acclaimed products backed by superior design and technology and an excellent distribution and after-sales service network. Philips has been operating in India for over 75 years and employs over 4,000 employees around the country.

Price Band of SureSigns VM3 - These are configurable products with a few options in configuration, based on which price band is from Rs 1.0 Lac to Rs 1.5 Lacs

Price band of SureSigns VSV central monitoring station - Rs 1.5 to Rs 2.0 Lacs

SureSigns monitors have many installations in India such as -

1. South - Pushpagiri hospital, manipal hospitals CSI Karakonam, St Philomena hospital
2. AP - Lotus children hospital, Aditya hospital, Gandhi Medical college, Osmania medical college, Nellofer Children hospital, Sai Ram hospital
3. East - Government medical college, RNT hospital
4. West - Nirmal Children hospital, Central India Institute, Wockhardt hospital
5. North - Fortis hospital, Anand hospital, Ravi hospital, Metro hospital, Balaji Action hospital, Dayanand Medical College, Jaipur Golden, Central hospital

SureSigns Patient monitors are sold by Philips distributors in there respective territories all across India, to know the nearest authorized distributor please send email to jayeshpathak@philips.com

Philips has very strong and elaborate service network for high performance utilization and uptime of these monitors all across India.

http://www. philips.com