Philips To Improve Lakeland's Patient Monitoring System

Koninklijke Philips N.V. (NYSE:PHG) recently announced that it has inked an agreement with non-profit community health care provider, Lakeland Health, to integrate its IntelliVue Guardian Solution with automated Early Warning Scoring. Lakeland is implementing IntelliVue Guardian into all three of its units.

Philips’ IntelliVue Guardian Software, which has been rolled out in the United States early this year, has enjoyed a steady traction. It is well equipped with software and clinical decision algorithms, which will allow healthcare personnel to validate patient data directly, reduce human errors and save time. IntelliVue Guardian Software provides information to clinicians on a real-time basis to help them take better decisions.

It further allows healthcare personnel to review a patient’s condition, improve workflow efficiency and simplify the medical documentation. Lakeland Health had first implemented Philips’ patient monitoring technology in June 2016. The company’s state-of-the-art technology has allowed it to bring down cases of cardiac and respiratory arrests significantly.

Over the past couple of years, Philips has successfully morphed from a lighting company into a healthcare technology provider. Also, the company's transformation from a hardware-oriented to a software-driven business, with a higher-margin and recurring-revenue model, sits well with investors. The stock has enjoyed an impressive run on the bourse for the past six months returning 25.9%, outperforming the industry’s average gain of 14.5%.

This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company is focusing on key opportunities in population health management, while improving its enterprise wide solutions for health systems, and collaborating with health care organizations to fortify its foothold in the healthcare industry. Also, Philips has been attracting positive analyst attention in the past 30 days, with estimates moving north. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal 2017 earnings has increased from $1.55 to $1.57.

Stocks to Consider

A few better-ranked stocks in the same space include Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) , Applied Optoelectronics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAOI) and Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) . While Lam Research and Applied Optoelectronics sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), Applied Materials carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Lam Research has an impressive earnings surprise history for the trailing four quarters, beating estimates all through, with an average positive surprise of 4.4%.

With four back-to-back earnings beats, Applied Optoelectronics has an average positive surprise of 21.0%.

Applied Materials has a striking earnings surprise history as well. The company surpassed estimates in each of the trailing four quarters, with an average positive surprise of 3.4%.

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