Royal Philips is a diversified health and well-being company, focused on improving people’s lives through meaningful innovation in the areas of Healthcare and Consumer Lifestyle. The company is a leader in cardiac care, acute care and home healthcare, as well as male shaving and grooming and oral healthcare.
Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips posted 2017 sales of EUR 17.8 billion and employs approximately 74,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries.
Global resource constraints on health systems are driving a shift to value-based healthcare to reduce cost, increase access and improve outcomes. At the same time, aging populations across the globe and the rise of chronic conditions are driving a shift of care to lower-cost settings and the home. In parallel, more and more people are looking for new ways to proactively monitor and manage their health. And the digitalization of healthcare is shifting value from devices to software and services. These challenges can only be met through new, more integrated forms of care delivery across the health continuum, with a shift away from today’s focus on acute care and late-stage interventions.
In an increasingly connected , the convergence of Philips’ consumer technologies that facilitate healthy living, medical technologies that help clinicians to deliver better diagnosis and treatment, and cloud-based technologies that enable data sharing and analysis, will be a key enabler of more effective, lower-cost integrated health solutions. This fits very well with our core strengths in professional healthcare and in consumer health and well-being.
Philips actively participates in ‘Open Innovation’ through relationships with academic and industrial partners, as well as via European and regional projects, in order to improve innovation efficiency and share the related financial exposure. In 2017, Philips invested EUR 1.76 billion in Research and Development, or 10% of sales. Royal Philips’ total IP portfolio currently consists of over 80,000 patent rights, 50,000 trademarks, 86,000 design rights and 4,400 domain names. Philips filed around 1,200 patents in 2017, with a strong focus on the growth areas in health and well-being.
Philips Research (www.research.philips.com) is a global organization that helps Philips introduce meaningful innovations that improve people’s lives. It provides technology options for innovations in the area of health and well-being, targeted at both developed and emerging markets. Positioned at the front-end of the innovation process, we work on everything from spotting trends and ideation to proof of concept and – where needed –first-of-a-kind product development. We put people at the centre of our work, responding to their aspirations, needs and desires while constantly achieving better energy efficiency and higher levels of sustainability. This approach, together with our Open Innovation strategy which leverages the joint innovative power of partnering companies and researchers, has led to more than a century of breakthrough innovations.
In the 5G-TOURS project, Philips Research is working on new immersive tele-sonography solutions that enables remote consultation and guidance of a local paramedic by a remote expert in emergency situations.
This is done in close cooperation with partners in 5G-TOURS that are active across the value chain, including mobile network operators (Orange), research institutes (BCOM), video communication solution providers (AMA), 5G equipment vendors (Nokia) and healthcare providers (ambulance services SAMU 35, Rennes University hospital).
Key is the timely involvement of the best medical experts, independent from the location of the expert and the patient. Both high bandwidth (eMBB) and ultra-reliable low-latency (URLCC) communication, as will be provided by 5G-TOURS network, are essential to this application. URLCC will enable interactive remote diagnostics, while eMBB will enable high resolution video streaming from the ambulance to the remote expert to provide additional diagnostic capabilities.