Philips Software Centre's Medical Systems Division will increase its strength from the current 150 engineers to 175 by the year-end and then on to a total of 250 employees by 2004. The division, which develops software for x-ray, MRI, medical imaging and cardiology information systems, intends to offer its expertise in computed tomography imaging and nuclear medicine.

The division's well-known Remote Servicing software framework which allows the building of applications to carry out remote diagnostics, done usually over the web, is now used in medical systems. The software has helped save time and cost for service engineers who can avoid trips to hospitals to check out the equipment by monitoring installations on the web and view them anywhere in the world and go to the site only if there is a problem.

"Remote servicing has been in other industries for a long time, but the trend is maturing in healthcare as it is a critical area for preventive maintenance requiring constant systems diagnostics. The ultrasound scanners of Philips used in the International Space Stations five years ago were monitored through remote servicing. In the past medical systems a large number of service engineers were needed to attend service calls. Remote servicing has increased the speed of response and reduced the number of service engineers needed, S Bhaskaran, Director, Software Competency Centre, Philips Medical Systems, at the Philips Innovation Campus (PIC),Bangalore told Pharmabiz.com.

Other software applications developed are for cardiovascular, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) apart from its competence in the development of DICOM (a standard for communicating between two modalities).

The Bangalore-based Philips Software Centre is a total development centre and the software developed here is offered to the Philips Medical Systems group worldwide. Philips Medical Systems India located in Mumbai, is responsible for its sales and service.

The main strengths of the Centre are its engineers who have a strong foundation in principles of software engineering, and competence in specific domains like functionalities of MRI, x-rays etc. the Centre has achieved Level 5 of Capability Maturity Model (CMM).

Philips is the second largest medical systems supplier in the world after General Electric (GE) has emerged stronger in the last three years with four major acquisitions of Marconi Medical Systems, Agilent's Healthcare Solutions Group, ADAC Laboratories and ATL Ultrasound.

Indian markets are very receptive to software solutions primarily because of the growth of health tourism. There is a demand for specialist healthcare facility.

India is a natural market because of the high cost-economics of treatment and Technology savvy medical specialists, said Bhaskaran. Philips Medical Systems India is aggressively moving towards leadership status.

Plans are chalked out to consolidate its medical domain competence, deliver more functionality from Bangalore and develop the skills needed to address areas of Computed Tomography Imaging and Nuclear Medicine.

About the range of Intelligent Clothing (jackets with pulse, blood pressure and ECG sensors) that was launched in the US and Europe markets via the ethical route, Bhaskaran said that it was not yet a product for India because it is yet to mature in the West. Shortly, Philips will become a trendsetter by introducing clothing equipped with non interventional blood monitoring system.