As part of the Healthy South Texas pilot project — a $10 million project that hopes to develop population health solutions such as preventing diabetes, asthma, and infectious diseases — Philips and The Texas A&M University System have partnered to establish the Center for Global Health and Innovation.

The Center, which will be established on the university’s campus, will promote public-private partnerships in designing, developing, prototyping, and showcasing health care solutions.

“Many of today’s problems are too complicated and expensive to be addressed by the public sector alone,” said Chancellor John Sharp of Texas A&M, in a statement. “Public-private partnerships can show the way for addressing issues such as health care in a collaborative way that benefits our citizens, both as health care consumers and taxpayers.”
One aspect of the program, Healthy South Texas Population Health Initiative (HST), aims to scale national and global models of population health management in order to build a “robust and replicable foundation” for preventing disease. HST will have wellness services that will expand and enhance disease prevention and control programs.

EMS Integrated Solutions will also be part of the collaboration, where a platform that links EMS supplies and service will help increase the efficiency and efficacy of emergency medical coordinators. The solutions will use Philips’ decision-support and analytic technologies — with training programs provided — to help administrators prepare for, respond to, and recover from major medical “disasters”.

According to Dr. Mark Hussey, vice chancellor and dean of the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, 70 percent of emerging diseases are transmitted from animals to humans. To address this problem, the partnership will create a program on point-of-care diagnostics and biosurveillance.

It will combine Philips’ point-of-care diagnostics with the university’s knowledge in animal biosurveillance to create an integrated network for monitoring infectious disease. Additionally, standards will be established for a One Health approach, the concept that says human health is connected to both animal health and the environment.

“This program puts us shoulder-to-shoulder with those who are on the front line of care, giving us unprecedented insight into developing real-life applications and solutions that can make a difference in human health on both a local and global scale,” said Hans Aloys-Wischmann, head of Philips Research for North America, in a statement.

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