Healthcare continues to move outside the hospital and into our homes and everyday lives. With leading doctors and psychologists, for example, we've developed personal health programs designed around patients to catalyze sustainable behavioural change.
If we are to ensure that health care remains affordable and widely available for future generations, we need to rethink radically how we provide and manage it.
With access to professional coaching and support around the clock, patients will feel more empowered to manage their own physical wellbeing.
Perhaps sooner than we think, African innovations will help the rest of the world create lasting social and economic value.
Our myopic focus on producing and consuming as cheaply as possible has created a linear economy in which objects are briefly used and then discarded as waste.
Philips is committed to the circular economy and is applying its principles throughout the organization. We are redesigning our products and looking at ways to capture their residual value.
Government should create the environment and incentives to stimulate investment in sustainable innovation, take away barriers, and accelerate adoption, even in turbulent economic times.
Government should seek more strategic approaches to developing dynamic, resilient infrastructure. Business must be more creative in offering financing solutions as partners with government, and people must support sustainable innovation as a public policy priority.
Time may not be on our side, but innovation is.
As humans, we've always innovated our way out of problems, whether it was the first torch to light a dark cave or the steam engine that sparked a revolution.
City farming is not only possible, it is the very definition of the kind of meaningful, sustainable innovation we will need to meet the grand challenges of the 21st century: climate change; population growth; ageing population; urbanization; rising demand for energy, food and water; poverty; and access to healthcare.
Meaningful innovation can be an important catalyst in encouraging resilience in seniors, keeping them independent and engaged.
Healthcare is a conservative marketplace.
Concerns about the possible side-effects of connected care are swept aside by the expectations of the benefits when people are confronted with a chronic disease themselves. Resistance that could be privacy-related completely disappears.
When I became CEO, I was really worried that we were in commoditized segments that were mature and no longer growing. So we made a radical pivot into health technology because that is one of the world's unmet needs.
Our strategy is focused on driving better outcomes for patients and higher productivity for hospitals.
It has not escaped us that other competitors have also identified health as an attractive marketplace.
When you make a courageous statement, people start to follow you, and that's nice.
Having a consumer brand helps us a lot. We will see more ambulatory care, and there will be a lot of new ways to deliver healthcare... and that means consumerism is going to play a bigger role.
Great companies need to reinvent themselves. We can do that: we can stay relevant, we can grow, and we can stay successful. It takes courage, but it's a path we've been preparing for carefully.
