Salesforce partners with Philips to enter the healthcare cloud

Salesforce.com and Philips partner to help the healthcare sector

A few days ago, Salesforce.com (CRM) announced that it’s partnering with Philips (PHG) to enter the healthcare market. The companies will collaborate on Philips’ medical devices with Salesforce.com’s cloud computing expertise. Salesforce.com has already started working on a few cloud applications to monitor patients’ health information for people suffering with chronic diseases. The partnership plans to automate patients’ health records so that they free up doctors’ and nurses’ time looking up the data themselves.

Chronic diseases are on the rise

According to a report from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and arthritis cause 70% of deaths each year in the U.S. Of U.S. adults, 50% live with at least one chronic illness. As the chart above shows, the percentage of U.S. children and adolescents with a chronic health condition has increased by four times, from 1.8% in the 1960s to 7.0% in 2004. Salesforce and Philips plan to work with patients who have chronic diseases to help doctors provide correct treatments.

Google and Apple have also entered this market

During the recent I/O developer conference in San Francisco, Google (GOOGL) announced Google Fit. This is a new health service app to collect data from activity trackers. Last month, during the Worldwide Developer Conference (or WWDC) event, Apple (AAPL) introduced its HealthKit application. This app lets users see all their health information in one place and also share that data with doctors and hospitals. Apple’s upcoming smartwatch could use HealthKit to track users’ health and fitness. Fitbit, Garmin (GRMN), and Nike (NKE) are some of the largest players in the activity tracker market.