January 7, 2019

Philips Cares digitizes the aging and caregiving experience

New digital experience empowers caregivers and their loved ones to connect care and enhance support with meaningful insights across the aging journey

Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Las Vegas, U.S. – At CES 2019 (Booth # 44219, January 8-11, Las Vegas, NV), Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA), a global leader in health technology, today launched Philips Cares in the U.S. to help family caregivers be there for their aging loved ones, easing and enriching their aging journey by leveraging digital technology.

Whether caring for a loved one or for themselves, Philips Cares Aging & Caregiving service is a digital experience which enables people to easily form and activate a care circle of trusted family and friends, access meaningful insights into their loved one’s wellbeing and receive notifications about care. Philips Lifeline personal alert service can also be managed through the digital experience. And just as before an aging loved one can still with the simple press of their Philips Lifeline personal alert button connect with a trained care specialist 24/7 to dispatch the right kind of help. Now though the care circle can stay informed and connected through the Philips Cares digital experience. With the introduction of Philips Cares, the company is transforming its services to help provide better care for loved ones throughout the aging journey so that people can worry less and focus more on the key moments that matter with their loved ones.

Connecting and digitizing the aging journey

Aging is hard both for seniors and their caregivers. Caregiving can be frustrating and overwhelming, often taking a care circle of friends, family and professional services to support those we love while helping them maintain a sense of home and dignity. Philips Lifeline has been at the center of these care circles for over 40 years, serving over 7 million seniors and their caregivers through a network of more than 2,500 hospitals, home health agencies, non-clinical home care, and senior living communities. It is through this care network that we expose our predictive analytics derived from the Philips Lifeline service data so that professional caregivers can monitor, qualify and assess if someone is at risk of emergency transport. With our protocol services, seniors with the press of a button can have seamless access via our trained care specialists to our networks’ clinical care services before there is an emergency. For the first time with the Philips Cares digital experience, the entire care circle will be exposed, organized and connected to this rich network, analytics and services to support those on the aging journey.

“Whether you’re on the aging journey yourself or caring for a loved one, we all want to have peace of mind around getting older,” said Ripley Martin, General Manager for Philips Aging & Caregiving. “Philips Cares eases and enriches the aging experience for caregivers and seniors by providing them with access to always-on, supportive relationships across a care circle, enabling them to refocus their attention on the key moments that matter most.”

Supporting caregivers through technology

For the more than 40 million Americans providing care to their aging loved ones each year [1], and spending an average of 24.4 hours per week doing so [2], it can be a heart-wrenching, exhausting and overwhelming responsibility. Half of those report they experience high levels of stress, which can impact their own personal and professional relationships and responsibilities [3]. Despite its challenges, being there for your loved one as they age can be an enriching and fulfilling role. Connected technology can help lighten the burden for caregivers and help provide them with a renewed sense of control through access to insights into their loved one’s care status, while refocusing their attention on the key moments that matter most for their loved one and themselves.

The Philips Cares mobile application will be available to download from the Apple and Google Play stores, as well as can be accessed via web browsers. It will be available for customers receiving Philips Lifeline service in the U.S. in incremental rollouts starting in early 2019. At CES, Philips will showcase Philips Cares and other solutions in its portfolio of aging and caregiving solutions, including Lifeline GoSafe and HomeSafe personal alert services which help enable seniors to live independently while helping to ensure safety with 24/7 access to trained care specialists to dispatch the right kind of help. To learn more about how Philips aims to transform the aging experience for the entire family, visit their booth, #44219, Tech West, Sands Expo, Level 2.

For more information on the Philips integrated suite of Aging and Caregiving solutions, visit: https://lifeline.philips.com.

¹ AARP, Caregiving Frontiers, 2017.

² National Alliance for Caregiving, AARP. Caregiving in the United States. 2015.

³ AARP, Caregiving Frontiers, 2017.

About Royal Philips

Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) is a leading health technology company focused on improving people's health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. Philips' health technology portfolio generated 2017 sales of EUR 17.8 billion and employs approximately 77,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. News about Philips can be found at www.philips.com/newscenter.