Thank you for joining us for this morning’s breakfast briefing.
Thanks to the FT and to Andrew Jack for hosting today’s event.
Many thanks to Commissioner Vassiliou for joining us today and providing her views on the increasingly important role that patients are playing in healthcare provision across Europe.
It’s a pleasure to address all of you on “patient-centric healthcare” – a subject of strategic importance to Philips.
Over the past number of years, we’ve been transforming Philips into a health and well-being company.
Our professional healthcare activities account for over one-third of our annual sales, but it’s important to note that health and well-being drives development across our organization.
For example, we recently launched Direct Life, a personal coaching and service platform that is based on the simple idea that “what gets measured gets managed.”
People want to be more physically active, but most can’t find the time. Direct Life combines advanced technology – to track activity daily – with proven psychology of step-by-step coaching.
Direct Life is a good example of Philips’ overall approach to health: it’s not just about treatment – it’s about helping people to live healthy lives. It’s about ensuring that when people do get ill that they are supported along the entire patient pathway – through diagnosis; treatment and long-term disease management.
We are also harnessing our capabilities in Lighting to focus on health and well-being:
- Our wake-up light is one example of how we are positively impacting sleep patterns.
Returning to professional healthcare, today I would like to focus on 3 core beliefs that we hold at Philips:
- Firstly, people should be at the centre of healthcare – we need to empower patients
- Secondly, greater focus should be placed on prevention
- Thirdly, we need to foster collaboration between all stakeholders
Before elaborating on these points, I would like to consider where we are now.
A healthy population is the vital foundation of Europe’s future prosperity: we know that spending on healthcare is an investment in the health of people – “Health is wealth”, as Commissioner Vassiliou has already said, and with good reason. We know that healthy individuals lead to a healthy society, which in turn leads to higher productivity, an increased supply of labor and sustainable long-term growth.
But today those foundations are not in place: there are many examples of excellence in healthcare practice across Europe, but equally there are many opportunities that still need to be capitalized on.
At the same time, we need to change the way we think about healthcare as individuals: too often, we disconnect the day-to-day choices we make – what we eat, the exercise we take – from their impact on our long-term health. We hope that our healthcare providers will be able to fix us when something does go wrong.
And that’s what they succeed in doing. Our healthcare systems are set up to meet this “fix me when I break down” demand for acute treatment.
The result of this toxic combination of unhealthy lifestyles and focus on acute treatment is an explosion in the number of chronic patients who require regular medical care for the rest of their lives. That’s why chronic disease treatment now accounts for between 70-80% of healthcare costs in Europe.
As a society, we’re getting older and we’re getting sicker. We can’t afford to maintain the status quo as the resulting demands on our healthcare systems continue to rise – we don’t have the money, and we don’t have enough trained healthcare professionals.
Given this state of affairs, you are probably wondering what Philips’ vision for improved healthcare delivery is. I can tell you that we believe that:
- Home care is crucial for healthcare systems in the EU to manage the growing burden of ageing populations and the resulting issues of chronic disease management and shortage of healthcare personnel.
- Technology is an important part of the solution to today’s healthcare challenges, but it is not a panacea: we have to get the underlying approach right. At Philips, we believe that the key to making healthcare more sustainable is by taking the right approach to its delivery – one that puts the patient at its center.
- We believe this holistic approach is an effective and efficient means to address the healthcare challenges faced in the EU, and in many other parts of the world.
Turning now to our first core belief: ‘people should be at the center of healthcare’ - what does this mean in practice?
Putting the patient at the heart of care has several major implications:
- It means we need to empower patients: to give individuals the information they need to better understand how to manage their own health. For example, today only roughly half of European countries have given patients the right to a second medical opinion and free access to their own medical records.
- However, whilst we can all become more informed about our own health, we also need to recognize the vital role of healthcare professionals, and to empower those on the frontline of healthcare: doctors and nurses, but also carers in the community.
- It means that we need build clinical pathways around the way patients experience health care systems – too often today we still focus on clinical departments that aren’t well connected.
- It means that we need to provide healthcare wherever it’s best for the patient to receive that care – in the hospital, at home or anywhere else.
Now, what is Philips’ role in Europe’s evolving healthcare systems
a) Patient empowerment
When it comes to patient empowerment, clearly there is much work ahead of us, and whilst the EU is playing a major role here, it could do even more.
Here I would like to specifically highlight the proposed cross-border patient rights directive, with a number of important legal provisions, for example on transparent quality and safety standards and eHealth. It would be a great loss if these provisions focusing on increased cooperation between healthcare systems do not survive the decision-making process.
b) Building clinical pathways and extending home healthcare
Too often today we still focus on clinical departments that aren’t well connected, and on rewarding healthcare providers for carrying out procedures – not for generating successful outcomes for patients.
If we organize clinical pathways around the needs of patients, we not only lower their burden and improve their experience, but we can also reduce the cost of caring for these patients, and improve their clinical outcomes.
But with the ever increasing global ageing population, enhancing clinical pathways will not suffice. We also need to extend healthcare beyond the hospital into the home.
Home care is already playing an important role in healthcare – for Philips, it already accounts for sales of over one billion Euros annually.
Philips is also privileged to be leading ‘HeartCycle’, an EU-funded project that aims to improve care of heart patients through the development of remote monitoring solutions that enable them to monitor their condition at home and involve them in the daily management of their disease.
You are invited to have a look at a demonstration of Heartcycle and other EU-funded research projects we have in the pipeline, at the demonstrations here today.
Technologies like those we’re developing in the HeartCycle project meet a number of important needs:
- They are designed around the patient and they are focused on monitoring and prevention, helping to keep patients in their homes. All of this combines in a better experience for the patient and a lower cost for the healthcare provider.
- But we also need support from policy makers: We need the EU and national healthcare systems to define how existing ‘patient pathways’ can benefit from more extensive use of remote care technologies, and to incentivize the development of solutions that capitalize on these opportunities.
I now draw your attention to our second core belief that there is a need to place
c) Greater emphasis on prevention, screening and early diagnosis
This is an important step in building more sustainable healthcare systems. By prevention we mean promoting healthy living. Simply put – healthcare must become part of our everyday lives. The doctor is the medical expert, but ultimately the person in charge is the patient.
Philips advocates much greater co-operation with the European policymakers and EU healthcare systems on prevention, screening and early diagnosis of disease. Considering the role that prevention can play in reducing the burden on healthcare systems, it does not make sense that the vast majority of health services budget spend is dedicated to treatment.
I am glad to see in this respect that the recently launched European Partnership for Action Against Cancer aims to achieve 100% population coverage of screening for breast, cervical and colorectal cancer by 2013. Our industry will cooperate with policymakers in view of these ambitious targets.
What we need for Europe is a policy that looks beyond the medium term horizon of the few years.
We will enable Europe to do this by focusing on our third core belief which is working together by fostering collaboration between all the stakeholders in healthcare – including governments, healthcare providers, insurance companies and patients.
We need to set up a framework for innovation that addresses these key needs:
- To empower patients – to give them the right to access and learn from their own health information. We also need to empower patients to manage their own health in their local communities – this will reduce costs and improve outcomes
- To focus on prevention – both through encouraging healthy lifestyles and by investing in early detection of disease
The market and policy climate should recognize these aims. It should foster and reward best-in-class commissioning and delivery, and allow healthcare systems to develop consistently in a sustainable and positive way
Like roads or electricity supplies, healthcare is a key enabling infrastructure – if we build it correctly, it has the potential to have a huge positive impact on the future of Europe.
Collaboration is key to realize this positive impact – governments, healthcare companies, insurance providers & medical stakeholders need to team up for the benefit of all European citizens!
Thank you. I’d now like to hand the discussion back to our moderator.