Many sudden health emergencies have warning signs, even up to eight hours before they happen. The problem is there usually isn’t an expert around to spot them—unless that expert is an algorithm. That’s the promise for people with heart ailments of the new Phillips Wearable Biosensor (its working name). The a 4.6 by 1.6 inch, one-use patch monitors key vital signs and streams them wirelessly to a cloud-based service called IntelliVue Guardian that looks for early indications of trouble and sends alerts to doctors via their smartphones or tablets.

The Wearable Biosensor, made by a company called VitalConnect, provides a light, portable version of the vital-sign monitoring that allows hospital patients to avoid being always wired up to bedside machinery. The data streams to Philips’s cloud-based IntelliVue Guardian system, which tracks patterns of vital signs and sends early warnings of impending problems.

Sean Captain

Philips isn’t the only company that is attempting to keep better track of patients with heart disease using mobile devices. A startup named AliveCor has developed an accessory that fits on an iPhone, which it claims can detect the presence of an arrhythmia.

The Philips Wearable Biosensor can be used to keep a closer, automated eye on patients in the hospital; but it could also be used to track them at home. “You go to your GP [general practitioner aka primary-care doctor], you’re at high risk of a cardiac problem, and we put you on monitoring,” says Jeroen Tas, who heads up Philips Connected Care and Health Informatics division. “And then we can just stream the data to what we call our eCareCoordinator…in that way we can measure thousands of patients.” It’s part of what Tas envisions as a new role for doctors. “The role of the GP will probably be not just prescribing medicine, but [they] will prescribe apps and devices,” he says.

Cloud technologies will also enable specialist services from the GP’s office. Philips already offers ultrasound as a subscription service called Lumify, in which a GP or specialist performs an ultrasound scan and uploads the images to a cloud service where on-call experts examine the results. Tas hopes to extend it to cardiology. “You could have a cardiologist basically looking over the shoulder [of the doctor],” he says.

The Wearable Biosensor connects to a smartphone with Bluetooth to stream data over the Internet—just as dozens of fitness bands do. It’s another example of consumer tech filtering up to revitalize high-end, professional services like medical-grade health monitoring—something Philips calls the consumerization of health care. This process has reshaped the entire 125-year-old Dutch technology firm (co-creator of the CD and DVD). In 2014, it announced plans to split into two companies: Philips Lighting, maker of the popular Hue connected lights, and Royal Philips, formed by merging Philips’s consumer and professional health care franchises.

“A lot of our heritage is around consumer [products],” says Tas. Examples include electric toothbrushes and air purifiers. Philips is also a major producer of medical monitors, including heavy-duty devices like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines. According to Tas, Philips makes 40% of the world’s patient monitors. The new Royal Philips blurs the line between consumer and medical-grade technology. “You can look at it…from that very interesting intersection, and that’s basically where you start looking at patients as consumers,” he says. Consumers now expect information and tools to self-manage their health, says Tas. Philips’s eCareCompanion app runs on tablets and lets patients answer questions about their health that goes into their patient records. Philips is also developing an app for diabetes patients to monitor their condition. (There are plenty of diabetes apps, but Philips’s links to health care providers and allows patients to interact with their doctors.)