January 14, 2016, Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Jakarta, Indonesia – Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) today announced an agreement with the Sijunjung Regency in West Sumatra, Indonesia, for the full-scale commercial implementation, Philips’ first globally, of its Mobile Obstetrics Monitoring (MOM) service in the region. This scalable smartphone-based digital health service is designed to identify mothers-to-be who are at high risk of pregnancy-related complications and help reduce maternal mortality rates. Expanding mobile monitoring coverage, it addresses both rural and urban needs. Philips works together with PT. TELKOM, the largest telecommunication provider in Indonesia with a nationwide connectivity infrastructure, to ensure a robust and effective digital solution. The MOM telehealth service is planned to be introduced in other regions in Indonesia, India and Africa later this year.

The obstetrics monitoring solution enables midwives in remote locations to share vital measurements, observational data and mobile ultrasound images with obstetricians and gynecologists in the country’s larger hospitals and collaborate with them for improved decision making during pregnancy. The service features two mobile phone apps. The first allows midwives to collect vital measurement data - e.g. weight, blood pressure, temperature - and sync it to the MOM web portal. The second lets doctors track this data and review a woman’s progress. Specialists at regional primary care centers can also access the data via a MOM web portal to monitor women’s conditions and identify high-risk pregnancies via a dashboard interface. Training and education are also provided as part of the service.

“Indonesia, with 255 million people living on more than 900 islands, still struggles with one of the highest rates [1] of maternal death in the world partly due to the lack of access to healthcare services,” said Jeroen Tas, CEO Healthcare Informatics, Solutions and Services at Philips. “With the roll-out of our mobile obstetrics monitoring solution in West Sumatra we are helping to give people access to skilled healthcare personnel and the right technology at the right time. It’s a clear example of how digital technologies can facilitate preventative care and have a tremendous impact on the quality of care.”


In a one-year pilot project in collaboration with the Bunda Medical Center in Padang, Indonesia, that preceded today's announcement, Philips' Mobile Obstetrics Monitoring solution increased the early detection of high-risk pregnancies three fold and helped expectant mothers to receive the medical monitoring and treatment they needed for a safe delivery. The pilot had over 650 pregnancies within the program. Not a single woman died from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth through early monitoring and risk stratification.

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