Royal Philips and Medical University of South Carolina Health (MUSC Health), the clinical enterprise of Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), have announced an 8-year, $36 million strategic partnership to transform and improve patient monitoring for more than one million patients a year, reports Business Wire.

MUSC is now the fifth long-term, strategic partnership for Philips in North America. This partnership will entail Phillips installing, managing, and maintains patient monitoring systems. The partnership comes at a time where many hospital systems are consolidating in an effort to control costs while improving technology and advanced care.

With more than 275 million patients, Phillips will provide MUSC Health with access to the newest patient monitoring technology, implementation and asset management services. The partnership will help MUSC to implement a standardized clinical practice based on defined monitoring configurations and enable integration and interoperability with other clinical IT systems.

“We want to give our staff, learners, and patients access to the best patient monitoring technologies in order to deliver on the highest quality, safest, and most reliable healthcare through the use of Phillips patient monitoring equipment across our entire enterprise,” said Patrick J. Cawley, MD, CEO of MUSC Health. “As one of the leading academic health centers in the country, whose value proposition is transforming expertise, learning and discovery into unrivaled patient-centered care in every setting, partnering with Philips will help us to meet our goal of delivering an exceptional patient care experience.”

“Due to a growing aging population and the rising number of people with chronic diseases, healthcare providers are seeking more cost-effective ways to monitor, diagnose, and treat patients,” said Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Philips. “As the healthcare industry is evolving, long-term, strategic partnerships are becoming the business model of choice, allowing health systems to address value-based models and keep pace with technology, while improving the patient experience. Together, Philips and MUSC can offer patients access to more than a century of experience in healthcare innovation and deliver an exceptional patient experience and quality care, while managing the rising healthcare costs.”