EN
AR

smartQare: Closing gaps in vital sign monitoring

By Philips ∙ June 10 2025 ∙ 5 min read

General Care

Patient monitoring

article

Vital signs monitoring has gaps: in general wards, nurses manually check vital signs only a few times daily, leaving blind spots in patient status and consuming valuable time. Additionally, when patients are discharged, providers lack visibility into their condition, potentially missing important changes in their health. To compensate for this risk, patients may be kept in the hospital to be monitored for longer than necessary, which takes up bed space and inconveniences patients.

At-a-glance:

  • Philips has formed a clinical technology partnership with smartQare, a leader in wearable biosensors, integrating their wearable viQtor biosensor.
  • This partnership expands patient monitoring capabilities on general care units and at home using one integrated platform.
  • Patients can move through their care journey without losing data, and clinicians can access their data across settings.
  • This integration into everyday monitoring workflows has the potential to transform patient outcomes and shift from reactive to proactive care.

proactive care across the continuum

At Philips, our goal is to bridge the gap between high-acuity, continuous monitoring and post-hospitalization care, empowering clinicians to deliver more personalized and proactive care across the continuum.

 

To enable new care models that extend clinicians’ line of sight, Philips is partnering with smartQare, a company whose medical-grade wearable biosensor, viQtor, automates vital sign collection in low-acuity units and outside of the hospital. viQtor is a reusable, wearable sensor designed to transform general ward care through automated monitoring of skin temperature, pulse rate, respiration and oxygen saturation, as well as activity and fall detection in between or in place of manual spot checks. It can also be used at home, so patients remain connected to providers as they recover. By remotely monitoring patients from the comfort of their homes, health systems can accelerate early discharge from low-acuity units and reduce the risk of complications that may trigger a readmission.

 

Now, 24/7 remote monitoring provided by viQtor can capture minute-by-minute vital signs data and send it to Philips monitoring platforms, where it’s stored and visualized as one, continuous record.

 

The data integrates into to Philips Guardian automated Early Warning Scoring (EWS) solution, where advanced algorithms can inform clinicians about the patient’s condition and send notifications when intervention is needed, including to a central station or a nurse’s mobile device.

Closing gaps in vital sign monitoring

More continuous, complete care to more people

By integrating monitoring data across high-acuity, lower-acuity and home, clinicians always have access to the most up-to-date and comprehensive health data, no matter where the patient is. This enables patients to move through their care journey without losing data and gives clinicians access to vital insights across care settings – so they can confidently, and quickly, decide what’s next.

 

With access to detailed and consistent vital sign data, clinicians can create more individualized treatment plans that adapt to a patient’s unique health profile, and that shift care to the most appropriate setting. The expanded data stream also allows providers to monitor more patients at once using the same alert system that can lead to earlier detection of problems before they escalate into emergencies.

 

Partnering with smartQare aligns with Philips shift toward creating a more connected and integrated patient monitoring ecosystem, enhancing how clinicians deliver patient care by seamlessly incorporating technologies from other companies.

“Our strategic goal is to build an open ecosystem where various wearables can connect with our systems, providing clinicians with deeper insights to help them make more informed decisions.“

Sachin Chaudhari

Business Category Leader

Philips Hospital Patient Monitoring

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, so we aim to offer hospitals a range of connectivity options – Bluetooth, WiFi or cellular – different analytics and parameters, and options for different use cases in the hospital, during care transitions and at home. smartQare represents our first step in bringing this vision to life.

 

Philips chose to integrate with smartQare in particular based on factors such as viQtor’s medical-grade certification, security, range of vital sign parameters, cellular connectivity, ease of integration into the EMR and a form factor that is well-suited for patient comfort and usability. Another key factor was smartQare’s quality data, which ensures that the data clinicians rely on is both trustworthy and actionable.

A new era of personalized, proactive care

Since this integration is so new, care models are rapidly evolving. Philips anticipates that pioneering hospitals will take the lead in shaping groundbreaking care models that could revolutionize patient outcomes – shifting the focus from reactive to proactive care. Below are two exciting new patient pathways made possible by this joint solution.

Scenario #1: Trend monitoring on low-acuity units in between spot checks

Trend monitoring on low-acuity units in between spot checks

Background: A hospital has limited space, and an increase in high-acuity cases requires treating some patients who traditionally would be in the intensive care unit (ICU) in a low-acuity general ward instead. Administrators understand that this poses a risk: post-ICU, in-hospital mortality rates are 4–13%.[1-3] Nurses caring for these patients rely on spot checks to assess their progress – a time-consuming manual process. While the spot checks give the nurse insight into the patients’ vitals at that moment, they don’t give a complete picture of their condition since spot checks only provide a snapshot in time. In this scenario, patients could rapidly deteriorate in between spot checks.

 

(This is just one example. Other in-hospital uses cases include monitoring all patients in a low-acuity units to detect early signs of a complication and to reduce the amount of time nurses spend manually recording and interpreting vital signs.)

Below is an alternative scenario using viQtor:

  • viQtor is assigned to at-risk patients on the general ward after surgery.
  • It continuously measures their heart rate, saturation and respiratory rate, reducing the reliance on manual spot checks, while monitoring for activity and falls.
  • The data is sent to Philips Guardian with EWS where data is trended, providing a near real-time overview via the dashboard or mobile device.
  • If a patient’s condition deteriorates, the mobile device notifies the nursing staff (based on the cEWS protocol), reducing mortality risk and preventing re-admission to the ICU.
  • Additional spot check measurements (blood pressure, temperature) are done if needed, and automatically sent to Guardian.
  • There is seamless integration from Guardian into the EMR, ensuring a streamlined workflow.
  • The patient’s outcome is improved due to timely continuous oversight and early detection of deterioration. Patients feel safer and staff have less stress and feel more effective.

Scenario #2: Early discharge to home with a virtual hospital bed

complete care to more people

Background: A hospital is grappling with growing demand from an aging population and needs to maintain current cost while increasing patient throughput. Administrators are aware that when patients get home, an estimated 20% of them experience complications within 30 days, so they may keep post-surgical patients in the hospital to be monitored longer than needed, which can be inefficient, take up needed bedspace and inconvenient for patients who would be more comfortable recovering at home.

Below is an alternative scenario using viQtor:

  • Certain patients are allowed to go home after surgery without officially being discharged, wearing viQtor.
  • viQtor sends the patient’s heart rate and respiration to Philips Guardian with EWS, where data is trended, providing a near real-time overview via the dashboard or mobile device.
  • Nursing staff get a near real-time overview via the same dashboard they use to monitor in-hospital patients.
  • A remote EWS is generated, and nursing staff are notified of potential complications so they can alert the patient, their caregiver or EMS.
  • There is seamless integration from Guardian into the EMR, ensuring a streamlined workflow.
  • This proactive monitoring ensures that clinicians can intervene earlier if needed, whether it’s a change in vital signs or a sign of post-operative complications. This reduces readmissions and ensures timely interventions, while freeing up beds for patients who need them most.
  • Patients recover from the comfort of home while still under hospital care.

An eye toward the future

The world of wireless wearable medical devices is advancing at breakneck speed, and we’re just scratching the surface of its potential. Forward-thinking hospitals are at the forefront, eagerly embracing this transformative technology to fuel personalized, proactive care models. The goal is clear: by providing a continuous, unified view of a patient’s health, both during and after hospitalization, we can ease the strain on the healthcare system. Not only does this promise to improve patient outcomes, but it also tackles challenges like staff shortages, capacity management and the shift toward delivering care outside hospital walls.

 

Early adopters of this integrated monitoring technology are in a unique position to gather valuable data and conduct groundbreaking research, from patient stratification to uncovering the best use cases, optimizing treatment protocols and integrating telehealth services. Philips can play a key role in supporting these efforts, helping hospitals develop tools and workflows to better manage patient populations and empower hospital-to-home discharge programs.

 

The automation and simplification of patient monitoring, both in-hospital and remotely, are essential for addressing the pressing issues of capacity, reducing length of stay and alleviating staff shortages. The seamless integration of advanced vital sign monitoring technologies and the expansion of remote management capabilities represent an opportunity to elevate patient care and make it accessible to more people, more efficiently than ever before.

We are always interested in engaging with you.

Let us know how we can help.

1
Select your area of interest
2
Contact details

Footnotes
 

[1] Santamaria JD, Duke GJ, Pilcher DV, et al. The timing of discharge from the intensive care unit and subsequent mortality. A prospective, multicenter study.Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2015;191(9):1033-1039. doi:10.1164/rccm.201412-2208OC.

[2]Goldfrad C, Rowan K. Consequences of discharges from intensive care at night. Lancet. 2000;355:1138–1142. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(00)02062-6.

[3] Araújo I, Gonçalves-Pereira J, Teixeira S, Nazareth R, Silvestre J, Mendes V, Tapadinhas C, Póvoa P. Assessment of risk factors for in-hospital mortality after intensive care unit discharge. Biomarkers. 2012;17:180–185. doi: 10.3109/1354750X.2012.654407

[4] Agency for Healthcare, Research and Quality. https://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer/readmissions-and-adverse-events-after-discharge

Disclaimer
 

Results are specific to the institution where they were obtained and may not reflect the results achievable at other institutions. Results in other cases may vary.

 

You are about to visit a Philips global content page

Continue

You are about to visit a Philips global content page

Continue

Our site can best be viewed with the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome or Firefox.