Royal Philips announced today that it has opened a new center in the Netherlands to encourage the development of digital health care technologies that support the move toward more connected, value-based, patient-centered care. It is called the HealthSuite Labs co-creation center and will reside at High Tech Campus Eindhoven.

Multidisciplinary teams made up of health care directors and general practitioners will be able to work with patients and experts on clinical, design, digital and business to develop and implement integrated care solutions that improve self-management and continuity of care.

The solutions developed at the center will be enabled by Philips’ secure cloud-based IT infrastructure, HealthSuite Digital Platform. Philips and Salesforce collaborated in June 2014 to create HealthSuite, which works by collecting, compiling and analyzing clinical and other data from multiple devices and sources.

“Most of today’s health care budget goes to the fast-growing population of people living with chronic illness,” Jeroen Tas, CEO of health care informatics solutions and services at Philips, said in a statement. “The pressure on global health care systems is increasing, requiring them to find alternative ways of care delivery.”

The health care industry is shifting from a model of care based on treating patients when they’re sick to models toward prevention, and continuity of care in the patient’s home. But innovation, new solutions, need to be developed in order to propel that model.

Philips also announced that it is collaborating with the regional health care network, Zorgnetwerk Midden-Brabant, which represents the Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital and general practitioners, home care nurses, dietitians and patients in the region.

At the center, the organizations will develop a regional connected health model for patients with type-2 diabetes, which will be the first of its kind in the Netherlands. The patients will have control over their own actionable health data and they will be able to set goals to support them in making decisions that are important to their health and care management.

The project’s goal is to improve self-management for patients with diabetes and better their quality of life. The collaboration also aims to decrease visits to caregivers and increase treatment and medication adherence.

Philips will also be opening HealthSuite Lab co-creation centers around the world in the near future. The company already has centers planned for Asia and the U.S.

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