Philips Research North America - Cambridge, MA - Our sites - Philips Research

Philips Research Cambridge

North America - MA

For over 130 years, Philips has been innovating to create new technologies that serve humankind. Philips Research North America (PRNA) takes this tradition of innovation and involvement in the betterment of our world seriously. Prolific in receiving patents, it has over the years been consistently contributing to the medical literature and public conversations focused on advancing the science of healthcare. In short, we are a committed global technology developer and thought leader.

An integral part of Philips’ North American Innovation Center and Headquarters, PRNA is located at 222 Jacobs Street in Cambridge, MA in an area called Cambridge Crossing—where Cambridge, Somerville and Boston meet. Here, together with world-class academic and clinical leaders, we collaborate to shape the future of healthcare.

Within Philips’ North American Innovation Center Hub are teams from Research, Strategy, Design, Innovation Laboratories, the North American Market groups and innovation teams from within multiple Philips’ businesses. Philips Research has a Clinical Research program with relationships with over 200 clinical and academic organizations around North America and more than 30 major active programs.

Research Focuses

Precision Diagnosis and Image Guided Therapy
This research department identifies opportunities for innovation in image-guided therapy (IGT), ultrasound, and radiology and oncology informatics, including how to best use artificial intelligence and data for clinical workflow improvement related to screening, diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment. For example, informatics teams push the boundaries of how we transform care through enhanced decision-making tools that may entail virtualization. While Philips represents standards of excellence in MRI and ultrasound, IGT efforts cross imaging modalities. Efforts are always underway to push ahead. Take ultrasound. Teams constantly work to advance image quality, increase diagnostic confidence through quantitative tools, and develop artificial intelligence-enabled applications to bring ultrasound to new users and care settings. We take novel approaches to artificial intelligence, augmented reality, navigation, and robotics to drive procedure innovation. Philips’ approach is to work closely with clinical, academic, and industry collaborators to iteratively design and build for present and future.

Connected Care and Personal Health
This research department works on improving the healthcare continuum—from home, pre-hospital, emergency room, general ward, intensive care unit, and telehealth—using solutions powered by clinical knowledge, artificial intelligence, data science, and engineering. Teams focus on developing technology to support chronic and acute disease management. We innovate on ways to improve communication among clinicians, for example, through the use of analytics to optimize clinical and operational decisions. We also work to connect data from the care continuum and integrate multimodal data for complete patient phenotyping. Examples of algorithms discovered by this group include ones for detecting deterioration and hospital-acquired infection as well as predicting patient flow and monitoring for ventilator-acquired complications in the hospital setting using streaming patient monitoring data. Investigations into data are only increasing. Timely and accurate answers are needed to improve quality, comply with standards and regulations, and meet key performance indicators.

NA Market-Based Innovation Solution Hub
PRNA is also home to the North America Market-Based Innovation Solution Hub that engages with customers in the North American market to co-create. The team talks to present or prospective customers in the field or at demonstration sites within PRNA called Experience Labs that showcase technology. The group learns how to refine what exists or create anew. With a direct line to Philips’ global CTO Market Innovation Team (in part so the CTO can evaluate collaborations), the group is responsive to Philips’ vision, including its Quadruple Aims. As needed, it pulls experts from a multi-disciplinary business group called Innovation & Strategy (that represents strategy, research, engineering design, etc.) into discussions on relevant projects or initiatives.

Clinical Research Board (CRB), North America
The CRB develops and manages research relationships within the North American Market in part through Master Research Agreements. It identifies areas for growth and drives relationships at strategic research sites within North America and ensures program excellence and operational quality, including that which relates to the Quadruple Aims and needs of Philips’ Business clusters. Groups streamline the reporting of activities and emphasize data use and knowledge sharing with others in North America.

Figure Above: IoT and Philips’ Innovation Vision. Philips Research Departments align with business units to carry out Philips’ Innovation vision. This vision involves Philips being a needs seeker and, in doing so, addressing customers unmet needs using integrated, configurable, and adaptable solutions that evolve over time in an agile fashion. As we do this, Philips is incorporating, where applicable, technology considered part of the Internet of Things (IOT). An example of Philips’ progression within the IoT path is shown above. In light blue appears the names of just a sample of our products, including the Philips Lumify.

We Boldly Impact Healthcare

Philips founded its first research lab in 1914 and introduced a medical X-ray tube in 1918. A long line of breakthroughs have followed. In keeping with our tradition of being a technology leader, Philips has within its Cambridge site many researchers making bold impacts. Accomplishments include working with business units in rapid response to the COVID pandemic and applying artificial intelligence to healthcare data to create potentially life-saving early-warning systems. Details on these efforts and more follow.

COVID Responsiveness. By May 2020, Philips had begun doubling its production of hospital ventilators on a course to achieve a four-fold annual increase. As part of the Philips response, COVID-specific functionality, where relevant, was added to ventilators and ultrasound equipment.
Pre-Symptomatic Infection Alert. With the U.S. Department of Defense, as part of a first large-scale empirical exploration of its type, Philips developed an artificial intelligence algorithm to alert clinicians to infection more than 48 hours before observable symptoms. Such an alert can allow faster diagnosis and treatment of infections and quickly contain any communicable disease spread.
Novel Point-Of-Care (POC) Ultrasound (US). Researchers at the Cambridge location have taken POC US to a new level. Features added are allowing for unique views for diagnostic evaluation at the patient bedside. Research continues to push advances so POC US can be adapted for use in remote locations where US can connect to telehealth systems.
Early Deterioration Indicator for Hemodynamic Instability. Connected care scientist Erina Ghosh, PhD, and colleagues created a system for early detection of hemodynamic instability for alerting clinicians in the intensive care unit. Using data from 11,864 hospital admissions, the team showed its early deterioration indicator, or warning system, successfully flagged more of these patients with equivalent specificity relative to two commonly used systems for patient deterioration prediction.

Global Thought Leadership

Globally, Philips Research continually shows thought leadership. Here are a few out of countless examples:

National Institutes of Health Sumner J Yaffe Lecture: Digital Biomarkers in Pediatrics. This lecture, presented by Dr. Joseph Frassica (Head of Philips Research, the Americas and Chief Medical Officer Philips North America), outlines the application of high-resolution physiologic data for discovery of digital biomarkers for predictive algorithm development and pharmaceutical research and potential impact of the data on pediatric/neonatal care.
Big Data Meets Precision Medicine. This paper, with Philips senior scientist Tim Hulsen, PhD, as first author, helps everyone understand the world of big data as a burgeoning field and its role and application in healthcare.
Guidelines for Developing and Reporting Machine Learning Predictive Models in Biomedical Research: A Multidisciplinary View. Philips Research was part of an international team to develop guidelines on how to create machine learning models and properly apply them within biomedical research.

Facts & figures

Philips Research North America

1944: Established in Irvington, NY
1964: Expanded and moved to Briarcliff Manor, NY
2015: Relocated to Cambridge, MA
2021: 135+scientists from many disciplines

Philips Global Research Patent Portfolio

Consistently voted a Derwent Top Global Innovator^TM
64,500 patent rights
50% software/data science focus

Financial Conflict of Interest Policy

FCOI Policy document

Come be a part of our Research organization!

For the eighth consecutive year, Philips won a Top-100 place in Clarivate Analytics’ 2021 list that identifies the world’s most innovative companies.
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Our Medical Research Alliances

At Philips Research we ensure we work with others who are committed to advancing healthcare technology, such as:

Strategic government organizations, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Defense (DOD), Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and others.
Academic organizations and medical centers, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Mayo Clinic, The Texas A&M University System, Oregon Health & Science University, Yale University, and many more.

Philips Research Americas
222 Jacobs St.
Cambridge, MA 02141, USA

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