Philips CMO is excited about digital health possiblities

Philips Chief Medical Officer Dr. Carla Goulart Peron [Photo courtesy of Philips]

“I personally believe the future of healthcare is going to be moving the needle, hopefully, more from treatment into prevention and early detection and early intervention, where we can actually make a much bigger difference for the patient individually,” Philips Chief Medical Officer Dr. Carla Goulart Peron said in the final part of her interview with Medical Design & Outsourcing.

By Chris Newmarker and Carrie Pallardy

In the final part of our interview with Philips Chief Medical Officer Dr. Carla Goulart Peron, she talked about the potential for AI and digital health to drive major change in several different areas of healthcare.

Peron also discussed her hopes for how advancements in respiratory care, stroke care, and women’s health could help to deliver better outcomes. The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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MDO: There are currently some recall issues that Philips is working through. After those issues are resolved, do you see Philips getting more involved in digital health around CPAPs and respiratory care going forward?

Peron: “Digital health is definitely one of our key areas. Everything that comes with technology to enable the users in different areas. Sleep and respiratory are definitely one of the areas. There is a lot of correlation also with cardiac care, obesity, sleep, and respiratory.

“There are developments happening behind the scenes independent of the situation right now, but this is definitely an area that we’re going to invest in. We talk about internally connected care: the ability to understand all those data points that are coming from different systems like the cardiovascular space, respiratory and sleep space, neurological space.

“All of this combined definitely will make a big difference in the future: enabling patients to get a little bit more ownership. We are already seeing that happening outside of the medical device environment. Your phone, different types of watches, and rings that are capturing information. CPAPs offer another data point and other ways of identifying sleep patterns or apnea. Those are definitely in the scope of what we’re doing for the future.”

MDO: How do you view navigating information coming from non-medical grade devices, like an Apple Watch or Fitbit, and medical-grade devices?

Peron: “We will need to learn how to navigate the nuances between the non-medically graded and the medically graded. I’m a user. I think everybody uses some kind of device that gives you some sense of how you are sleeping or your respiratory pattern, heart rate, you name it. I think those technologies today are critical for awareness, and they are bringing those patients into the healthcare system to help them to identify diseases earlier.

“I personally believe the future of healthcare is going to be moving the needle, hopefully, more from treatment into prevention and early detection and early intervention, where we can actually make a much bigger difference for the patient individually. Also, it’s a better investment in care.

“Today, those things are very separate. There are different regulations and rules of engagement for non-regulated products and regulated products. We need to respect that. If you’re thinking about a real diagnostic, you need to have products that are regulated and have the right level of accuracy for you to do that, but the non-regulated products are going to be cause more patients to pay attention and take that center role that I mentioned at the beginning and start looking for care earlier, which I think is beneficial for everybody.”

MDO: What are you excited for the future?

Peron: “There is a lot of excitement around many things. We started this conversation talking about stroke, and that’s something I’m very passionate about. I think there’s great technology coming. There is still a lot for us to do around access to that technology, but we are making good progress in partnering with institutions around the globe to push for that agenda.

“I’m also very passionate about women’s health, but not the traditional type of women’s health. We still have a massive gap in access to care for women. We are 50% of the population. Cardiac disease, for example, is still the leading cause of death among women worldwide, and we have less than half of the access. And so for me, anytime that we think about future development of innovation, it needs to include women. That’s what I’m very passionate about and definitely pushing that agenda internally: women’s heart health.”

MDO: How could AI help with advancing women’s health?

Peron: “I hope we can use gender diversity as we think about AI to reduce bias. Women experience symptoms differently than men with a heart attack or a stroke. If we can get that checked by the AI and help prioritize in the right way, that would be amazing. I think if we teach AI properly, it could help us to reduce the bias that comes naturally to us.”

MDO: It sounds like you are trying to be very cognizant about the risk of bias when training AI systems.

Peron: “We expect that it’s going to be better than humans. We make mistakes, right? We make assumptions. And I think this will be part of the development of AI. The big advantage, in my view, is that AI can touch so many more data points so much faster than myself or anybody. It would take years to actually learn, but AI can do that in seconds.

“We need to give AI good quality data, what we call data lakes. That’s why it’s so important to partner with the institutions to make sure that you have a good representation of your population when you are thinking about development.”

More on MDO:

Philips CMO Dr. Carla Goulart Peron on how medtech could empower patients

Philips is leveraging partnerships to fuel the adoption of medtech innovations

Philips’ Connected Care chief discusses AI, continued build of connected care ecosystem

Chris Newmarker is editor in chief of MassDevice and Medical Design & Outsourcing. Carrie Pallardy is a freelance writer and editor based in Chicago. She has more than a decade of experience writing and reporting in the healthcare space.