Philips has just announced that it will acquire Capsule Technologies for $650M, as reported by the journalist Conor Hale on FierceBiotech.
Key Takes:
- Philips acquires Capsule Technologies for $650 million
- Capsule’s platform connects medical devices and facilitates integrated healthcare solutions
- Philips plans to integrate Capsule’s platform into its portfolio to improve patient monitoring and management
- Philips has a strong focus on AI in healthcare and recently acquired BioTelemetry for $2.8 billion
- The acquisition comes amid rising demand for remote monitoring systems due to Covid-19
Capsule Technologies and Philips announce that Philips will complete the acquisition of medical data platform Capsule Technologies for $650 million. The deal, according to both parties, was completed in March 2021, two months after they made it public. [Capsule Technologies 635mHaleFierceBiotech]
As the acquisition takes place, more than 300 employees of Capsule Technologies would now be under Philips. According to 2021 stats by Capsule Technologies, their technologies, and SaaS services are used by some 3000 healthcare organizations. The development teams are based mainly in the US and France.
Capsule’s unique platform allows all the medical devices within a hospital to connect with each other and help design monitoring and integrated healthcare solutions. As the company leverages data, its system also helps in early disease detection and a variety of medical emergencies.
Philips believes that healthcare and AI need to come together in order to make healthcare effective and relevant in the 21st century, which is why the acquisition means something more than one business buying another. [Capsule Technologies 635mHaleFierceBiotech]
“Integrated patient care management solutions supported by essential real-time patient data and AI are core to our strategy to improve patient outcomes and care provider productivity by seamlessly connecting care,” stated the head of Philips division of connected care, Roy Jakobs.
“The acquisition of Capsule will further expand our patient care management offering. We look forward to integrating our strengths, adding a vendor-neutral medical device integration platform that further unlocks the power of medical device data to enhance patient monitoring and management, improve collaboration and streamline workflows in the ICU, as well as other care settings in the hospital and beyond its walls,” he added.
Additionally, Philips has plans to integrate Capsule’s vendor-neutral digital system into its own portfolio so that healthcare workers can make use of these new technologies and use them in ICUs and whatnot. [Capsule Technologies 635mHaleFierceBiotech]
This isn’t the first time Philips is getting into AI and healthcare. Back in December 2020, Philips bought BioTelemetry for a whopping $2.8 billion. BioTelemetry uses wearables to detect cardiovascular activities – these wearables can be worn both in hospitals and homes. What’s interesting about this platform is that the wearable keeps track of the data, analysis it, and processes useful insights not only for the healthcare professionals but also for the everyday patient/user.
If there’s one thing Covid-19 has taught us, that’s remote monitoring. Since Covid-19 hit, Philips’ medical device sales were dropping as hospitals delayed the installation of new equipment. However, the remote monitoring systems were selling like a charm, which may be why Philips went on and bought Capsule Technologies for $650 million.
Capsule CEO, Hemant Goel, on the acquisition
“We are very excited to become part of Philips and step up on our goal of empowering clinicians with simplified workflows and timely, actionable insights…Together, we will be even better positioned to liberate, aggregate, analyze, and share clinical data from connected devices that will support clinicians making more informed decisions, and ultimately drive the transformation from reactive care to insight-driven, proactive care delivery.” [Capsule Technologies 635mHaleFierceBiotech]
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