(Dignitaries), Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure for me to address all of you at this joint NDTV Profit – Philips conference on healthcare. As we all know, the future of healthcare is one of the most pressing global issues of our time.
Here in India, life expectancy has doubled since this country became independent and infant mortality has halved. A great achievement! Similar progress has been made in many other countries. The surge forward of so many emerging economies, India among them, allows us to envisage a world without needless suffering. For the first time in human history, a world with universal access to quality healthcare is more than a distant dream, thanks to, on one hand, the phenomenal economic success of the emerging economies, especially in Asia, and on the other hand the ongoing progress in healthcare innovation.
Since universal access to healthcare is becoming ever more feasible, we must make it our goal. Not only because it is a basic human right, but also because it is an essential condition for further economic development and for social justice.
Of course, the tasks ahead remain formidable, also in India. Some basic global trends and facts define our challenge. We have to cope with a demographic revolution: the global population is growing and graying. Here in India, for example, by the year 2050 about one third of the population will be older than 50! Chronic diseases like cardiovascular conditions, diabetes and cancer are rising rapidly, even among people under 50. At the same time, infectious diseases such as Aids and TB are still a menace. We are also facing a global, growing deficit of healthcare professionals. In many countries, including India, only a small percentage of the population is covered by health insurance. Finally, we have to meet the challenge posed by potentially devastating pandemics such as Sars or avian flu.
As a company that focuses on healthcare, lighting and consumer lifestyle, Philips is very much engaged in the efforts to improve people’s health and well-being, in developed as well as emerging economies. At Philips, we hold healthcare very dear. Healthcare is much more than just another large industry or business. It is a vital sector that literally deals with questions of life and death. We have long been a provider of solutions to the healthcare profession. Today, we are the world’s largest provider of healthcare technologies and services in many individual sectors, like patient monitoring, external defibrillators, cardiac ultrasound and cardiovascular X-ray.
Our areas of lighting and consumer lifestyle are often health-related, too! Our consumer lifestyle strategy is based on addressing the consumer's desire for Wellness and Pleasure, and we've mapped this approach by looking at the individual's interests in terms of their Space, their Mind, their Body, and their Appearance.
A healthy body is, of course, an essential condition for well-being. We're developing simple tools to help people take care of themselves and to make it easier for them to actively pursue healthier lifestyles. Today, consumers may buy the latest Flatscreen TV; but tomorrow, those same consumers may be looking for a home appliance that measures their blood pressure or their blood glucose levels.
In lighting, too, we do not only focus on pleasurable experiences, but also on environmentally friendly, low energy solutions and on applications of our lighting expertise in health-related areas. A good example is our Intelligent UV Water Purifier. Water-related diseases are responsible for millions of deaths every year. Clean drinking water should be a priority in any integrated healthcare program. Philips’ UV lamps that kill bacteria and viruses can be built into more traditional water purification systems.
So how should we face the difficult healthcare challenges ahead of us? I would like to share Philips’ vision with you, a vision that is informed by our deep experience as a provider to the healthcare professionals and by our profound knowledge of the needs and aspirations of consumers.
In healthcare, the ultimate consumer is the patient. That’s why the cornerstone of Philips’ healthcare philosophy is the passionate belief that the patient should come first. We need new technologies, of course, and Philips is one of the main providers. But our starting point should always be the real needs of patients.
Focusing on the patient-consumer in healthcare is now more important than ever, since consumers worldwide are becoming more health-conscious and more empowered at the same time. They want to live healthy lifestyles and we should encourage them. Every consumer that doesn’t become a patient because of a healthier lifestyle is a victory for the healthcare system.
Of course, even with a healthy lifestyle, almost everybody becomes a patient sooner or later. Therefore, we should enable doctors and nurses to do what they want to do: give patients their best. Lowering the work load of healthcare professionals, improving their job satisfaction, is one of the best ways to ensure a patient-centered healthcare system.
It is also extremely important to provide integrated, innovative solutions across the entire care cycle. We simply cannot afford to focus only on costly, traumatic treatment of illnesses late in the cycle. We have to concentrate on prevention, on early diagnostics, on remote patient management. This will allow us to build healthcare systems that are financially sustainable.
I also strongly believe that all players in the healthcare sector have to work together and cooperate across traditional boundaries: business, governments, insurers and healthcare providers. No single group can meet all the challenges on its own.
Let me illustrate what Philips’ philosophy means in practice by talking a moment about remote patient management. We think remote patient management can help to make healthcare available where it is not yet present and to keep it affordable where costs are becoming too high. As for affordability, at Philips we are strengthening our home healthcare business in developed countries.
Making healthcare available to patients in remote areas who currently lack any access is an even more important task. It is unacceptable that thousands of people - children and adults, men and women - die every week from diseases that could be easily diagnosed and treated. We cannot set up full-blown healthcare systems in all remote corners of the world anytime soon. But we can extend the range of healthcare quickly through remote patient management.
Earlier this year, Philips introduced the Easy Web Healthcare System in the Philippines. This internet-based system allows on-line remote diagnosis of patients with heart conditions by experts based at the Philippine Heart Centre in Manila. The Easy Web Healthcare System is providing vital healthcare to thousands of heart patients in remote provinces, patients who were previously beyond the reach of the specialists in Manila.
To find the right business models for remote patient management, we will need a lot of creative thinking. We will also need constructive cooperation between all parties involved.
Another important challenge we all face is the way healthcare is financed. In many countries, traditional healthcare insurance is not affordable for the majority of the population. That’s why it is so encouraging to see initiatives with collective micro-financing of healthcare in various Asian countries, India among them.
Industry, government, insurers, healthcare providers should all make a big effort and work together. Philips participates in a myriad of projects in which we cooperate with universities, healthcare institutes, pharmaceutical companies and governments all over the globe, also in India.
Industry should step forward, providing new solutions, products and technologies. But other players have to do their bit, including public authorities. For example, governments should try and reduce the global deficit of doctors and nurses. Public health authorities should be at the front of campaigns for healthier lifestyles and diets. Think, for example, about public campaigns against tobacco.
Healthcare institutions have the responsibility to make sure that their internal processes and organization are as efficient as possible. Insurers should try their best to come up with creative, accessible, commercially sustainable forms of financing for healthcare coverage.
Let me conclude.
Philips is passionate about healthcare. Yes, we are a company, we want to make profits, we want to grow; but we also want to achieve our mission of providing people with meaningful, innovative solutions which will improve their lives.
That’s why we want to engage in a discussion with all stakeholders in the healthcare industry. With governments, insurers, healthcare providers, industry and patients. We share the same goal: ensure access to affordable quality healthcare for everyone, because it is a basic human right. The discussion on how to achieve this goal has started, let’s take it forward. Only together can we succeed.
Thank you very much for your attention.
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