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The voice on the phone sounded more frustrated than frantic.
“I can’t get up from this chair, it’s too low,” the elderly Connecticut woman on the line said.
After determining that the woman wasn’t hurt, Lifeline personal response associate James Hogg called a daughter and two friends. When he didn’t reach them, he called the local fire department to help the woman.
Lifeline, best known for responding to falls by elderly patients, was founded in 1974 and bought by Philips Healthcare in 2006. Since then, Framingham-based Lifeline has grown from one call center to two, and head count has swelled to 1,000 from 675 since then. Through a series of four acquisitions, starting with Lifeline, Philips has built a new division, Framingham-based Home Monitoring, which now includes a medication dispensing service, a telehealth service to monitor patients with congestive heart failure, and a separate cardiac monitoring product.
Philips’ U.S. headquarters is in Andover, and the company is the largest medical device employer in Massachusetts, with total head count of 2,900 in 2009.
Here’s how Lifeline works: When a customer presses his or her personal health button, it automatically calls a 1-800 number that reaches a call agent. The vast majority of calls aren’t emergencies; customers are asked to check their devices once a month and also often press them accidentally. But with an average of 25,000 calls per day, that’s still a lot of emergencies.
Since most interventions involve calling loved ones, the company estimates that Lifeline saves the health care system around $41 million per year in emergency dispatch costs, and much more in avoided hospital admissions.
Next week the company will unveil a new addition to the product. Customers will have the option to add automatic fall detection to their button. If they fall and can’t push their buttons, call agents will automatically receive a call. The technology works by measuring the direction, velocity, height and impact of the subscriber’s movement.
“We are looking at an aging population that has a desire to live at home independently. But they are going to fall, they have complex medication regimens, and they often have chronic illnesses,” Walter van Kuijen, general manager for Home Monitoring, said.
The Home Health Care business, which includes Home Monitoring, accounts for roughly 15 percent of Philips Healthcare’s revenue — $1.5 billion in 2009. Philips executives expect the Home Health Care business to grow by double digits in 2010 and eventually plan to expand the Lifeline business worldwide.
The home monitoring business is expected to explode in the coming years, driven by two factors: aging baby boomers and the continued downward pressure on health care costs that will increasingly favor care outside the expensive confines of the hospital.
“Until now, the incentives haven’t been aligned for providers to employ home monitoring, but that is changing,” said Dr. Joseph Kvedar, director of the Partners Center for Connected Health in Boston.
And van Kuijen added, “We have to envision a future where we detect, prevent and do early diagnosis of illness and injury outside of acute care settings.”
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