The Dutch group took the turn in health at the beginning of 2016, after the sale of its “lighting” activity. Five years later, Philips is in the process of finalizing its ramp-up in the healthcare technology sector.
“We are completing the sale of our ‘home comforts’ activity for nearly 4 billion euros. It will be effective in the middle of the year and we now have a beautiful European group 100% focused on health,” said David Corcos .
“We are a leader in all our businesses, all around health, whether it is the ‘prevention’ axis or that of diagnosis and therapy.”
Regarding the “diagnostic and therapeutic” axis, Philips is today the world leader in scanner, MRI, PACS solutions and equipment and “very present in intensive care monitoring and the patient file in intensive care and anesthesia”, welcomed the president of the French subsidiary.
The group is also developing an important focus in interventional and minimally invasive activity. “We are also the world leader and in France in this activity and this is very important for us because we are supporting this ambulatory and minimally invasive shift in more and more therapeutic areas”, underlined David Corcos.
“Our last strategic focus concerns respiratory care in hospitals and at patients’ homes, with non-invasive ventilation, respiratory assistance against COPD. [bronchopneumopathie chronique obstructive] or sleep apnea, etc. There are hundreds of thousands of French people who use our connected equipment. “
To achieve the ambition of covering the entire “health continuum”, Philips spends 1.8 billion euros per year on R&D (research and development), or 10% of its worldwide turnover (19, 5 billion euros in 2020).
“We are very big investors in R&D and over a billion euros is just for software. It also marks a shift as we have gone from a company that made products and equipment to a company of health informatics, “argued David Corcos.
Strategic acquisitions to boost growth
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Philips continues to concentrate its resources “on promising sectors in order to develop and be a leader in high potential markets”.
To do this, the Dutch group is betting on external growth through strategic business acquisitions and collaborations in key areas linked or complementary to its activities.
Thus, last January, he announced the acquisition of the American company Capsule Technologies, specialist in medical device (MD) integration systems and data for healthcare establishments, for $ 635 million in cash.
This buyout allows it to enrich its portfolio with Capsule’s MD information platform and accelerate the remote care of patients.
“When we divested ourselves from ‘home comfort’ activities, it was to reinvest ourselves in health and in particular in hospitals. With Capsule Technologies, Philips becomes a major player in terms of interoperability between medical devices and cybersecurity in the hospital, and even outside, between the hospital and the home, “said David Corcos.
“Capsule is present in 38 countries, it has 300,000 equipped beds, they connect 950 different DMs and circulate the information of more than 20 million patients per year”, enumerated the boss of Philips France.
“We were doing a bit of interoperability between Philips monitors and patient records. There, Capsule’s strength is having this library of drivers for the 950 DMs of different brands.”
Founded in 1997, the company Capsule Technologies – initially French – has 300 employees, including 150 in France, of whom 100 are part of the R&D team.
“The acquisition is fully completed and we are in the process of integrating the Capsule Technologies teams into the French Philips teams.”
In 2020, the newly acquired company achieved sales of over $ 100 million and experienced strong double-digit growth.
“All these MDs produce a lot of data which, if they are not transmitted to the patient file, is lost. Capsule stores them in the patient file and this data will be used to improve the quality of care and to make a better diagnosis”, a detailed David Corcos.
“They will also be used to feed decision-support tools: algorithms, even artificial intelligence (AI) modules.”
As a reminder, in April 2018, Philips set up in Suresnes (Hauts-de-Seine) a global AI center of expertise dedicated to medical imaging, genomics and the ecosystem of French Tech AI start-ups. .
Today, it brings together 50 researchers and engineers, holds more than 100 patents and claims 200 publications. The center has a clinical focus in cardiology, oncology and rare diseases.
In addition, Philips also relies on this data to “fuel research”.
A scientific and innovation partnership in health aimed in particular at improving the management of cerebrovascular accident (CVA) and “intelligent” surveillance in intensive care thanks to the use of health data has been signed. with Rennes University Hospital last January, we recall.
“The new frontier is the integration of AI in more and more of our equipment to help better diagnosis. This computer and algorithmic shift is our daily life today and the best is yet to come”, said declared the president of Philips France.
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