CleanMed Europe 2021 Reflections: Digitalization is a Key Pillar for Sustainable Healthcare

Last week, I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote session at CleanMed Europe 2021 on digitalization and sustainable healthcare. From the discussions at the event, it is evident that healthcare leaders across the industry recognize we are at a critical tipping point to avoid further damage to our planet. This meeting with likeminded leaders offered a forum to spread awareness of the urgency to adopt circular economic models, foster ground-breaking collaborations, and catalyze out-of-the-box approaches to sustainable healthcare while keeping the patient at the center of everything.

At Philips, with our innovation power, ability to scale, and strong partnerships, we understand our responsibility to be sustainable – from our day-to-day operations to our circular product and business model innovation, to greening our supply chain.

While there is a critical role for those of us in the private sector to play in addressing these responsibilities, we are just one part of the solution and recognize we need to support and partner with our customers in their sustainability journeys as well. As I spoke about in my keynote speech, digitalization of healthcare is a key pillar of our strategy to deliver maximum value with minimum resources. Our customers’ appetites for digital solutions – from telehealth, to cloud, to software-as-a-service models – will not only be a driving force of sustainable, resilient healthcare, but also improve patient outcomes.

Digitalization’s Role in Making Healthcare Sustainable

There is a reason digitalization is one of 6 key transformations needed to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals, according to a paper published by J.D Sachs and others. As we work to maximize the lifetime value of our solutions, digitalization will help drive more efficient use of scarce resources, reduce carbon emissions and our material footprint. Let’s examine three key digitalization trends to demonstrate their positive impact on our planet:

• Telehealth: Telehealth is increasingly recognized as a “secret weapon” against climate change, according to the American Medical Association. By shifting care from clinical settings to the home, telehealth will help reduce transportation-related emissions. In fact, swapping physical visits with telehealth visits can result in a 40-70x decrease in carbon emissions. Telehealth’s ability to support preventative care and get ahead of health issues before they require a hospital admission also helps reduce waste of critical hospital resources and hardware utilization.
• Cloud: Shifting to the cloud uses significantly less energy and materials compared to on-premises servers. Organizations can realize up to 93% energy savings when switching to the cloud, with the carbon reduction potential of moving to public clouds equal to taking 22 million cars off the road. In our own organization, we saved 15 tons of CO2 emissions from our remote installment of Philips TASY, our EMR informatics solution, compared to onsite. Beyond energy savings, integrating data in a meaningful way through the cloud means we can create smarter, connected health solutions that drive proactive care, helping reduce preventable waste of future hospital resources.
• Circular business models: We are increasingly moving from selling physical products to offering their use as a service through periodic, usage and outcome-based models, which can be scaled according to need. Flexible solutions that are easier to implement, install and maintain means customers have access to the high-tech solutions they need with a much smaller environmental footprint. For example, our Enterprise Monitoring as a Service (EMaaS) offers enterprise-wide patient monitoring service through a per-patient-use model, supporting responsible recycling of assets and helping ensure solutions are only used on an as-needed basis.?

Public Health and a Healthy Planet go Hand-in-Hand

Every care decision should be the right decision for the planet as well, no exceptions. Although Philips achieved our 2020 sustainability goals – notably becoming one of the first health tech companies to be entirely carbon neutral in our operations – our work is far from over. We are dedicated to helping our customers solve climate challenges through digital innovation and collaboration. We team up with partners across the value chain to create resource efficiencies and realize structural environment and social improvement. For example, we recently made a new commitment aiming for at least 50% of our suppliers to commit to science-based targets for CO? emission reduction by 2025. If we’re successful in achieving this goal, it will have an impact seven times greater than the reduction of CO? emissions from Philips’ own operations.

By connecting care through innovative technology, we can not only drive sustainability but also improve health outcomes and access to care – I’m proud that our Connected Care solutions touched nearly 660 million lives in 2021, including over 51 million in underserved communities. By taking better care of the planet, we can take better care of people. The potential of the digitalization of care is clear, and by working together with our customers, industry experts, and other technology partners across the industry, we can successfully design the healthcare of tomorrow.?

My full remarks are available here.