Digitalisation is a key pillar for sustainable healthcare

Digitalisation is a key pillar for sustainable healthcare

Roy Jakobs, Executive Vice President, Chief Business Leader, Connected Care, Philips

From the discussions at CleanMed Europe 2021, it is evident that healthcare leaders across the industry recognise 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 catalyse out-of-the-box approaches to sustainable healthcare while keeping the patient at the centre 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. But we are just one part of the solution and recognise we need to support our customers in their sustainability journeys as well. As I spoke about in my keynote speech, digitalisation 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.

Digitalisation’s role in making healthcare sustainable

There is a reason digitalisation is one of six 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 maximise the lifetime value of our solutions, digitalisation will help drive more efficient use of scarce resources and reduce carbon emissions and our material footprint. Let’s examine three key digitalisation trends to demonstrate their positive impact on our planet:

• Telehealth: Telehealth is increasingly recognised 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 utilisation.
• Cloud: Shifting to the cloud uses significantly less energy and materials compared to on-premises servers. Organisations can realise 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 organisation, 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. 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 digitalisation 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.