Philips launches global startup collaboration program
Royal Philips gives access to 19 Artificial Intelligence startups to the expertise within Philips and the global ecosystem of hospitals.
Royal Philips has started a global acceleration program for the artificial intelligence start-ups. This program is conducted across different parts of the globe including the hubs in Europe, the US, Netherlands, China, and India. Around 14 countries participated in this program. This is an intensive 12-week program focused on artificial intelligence in healthcare. Through this program, the company decides to give access to these start-ups to both the health technology experts of Philips and the global ecosystem of hospitals, investors, clinicians, academic, industry and other knowledge partners.
Also, the company plans to help the start-ups build and test their ideas. Through this collaboration, the company decides to come up with treatments for the ultrasound, radiology, oncology, and others using the AI-based clinical support tools. After a proper analysis, 19 out of the 750 applicants are selected for the Philips incubator program.
Regarding this collaboration with 19 early startups, the head of Philips Healthworks, Alberto Prado said that the company used intelligent technology to improve people’s health across the health continuum, from a healthy lifestyle and prevention to diagnosis, treatment, and healthcare.
He said that through this program the company also aims at increasing the efficiency of healthcare delivery and the company has already started working towards that. He further said that they have started working with their clinical partners to develop solutions that are artificial intelligence based and the ones grounded in scientific research and validated clinically.
He feels that the new collaboration would help the mass recognize the roles that these start-up companies play in bringing a revolution in the healthcare innovations to the market.
Solutions based on artificial intelligence have a high potential to improve health-related problems and improve the efficiency of care delivery. But what is important is the careful, deep and thorough understanding of the healthcare domain needs and the tools or solutions should be developed in close collaboration of the people in the healthcare industry, who would be using them.
To support the company’s idea of AI in the healthcare industry, the company has come up with a platform ‘Philips HealthSuite Insights’ through which the company deploys and delivers tools that are healthcare-specific and technologies for addressing the processes of building, testing, validating, maintaining and scaling the solutions. Some of the tools that the ‘Philips HealthSuite Insights’ provides are the machine and deep learning applications in Philips’ diagnostic imaging solutions, telehealth solutions, and others.
This program started in the month of September and will go on till the end of December. The CEO of Philips Innovation Campus Bengaluru, Srinivas Prasad, said that last year in the first batch of selection for a similar program, there were startups with exceptional ideas for healthcare. He also said that with the theme of Artificial Intelligence this year the company aims at enhancing their AI approach by collaborating with the start-ups, and thus they both help each other to have successful and sustainable businesses.
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