Collaborative Health Research and Philips' patient orientation

“We need to get rid of silos.” Two men from the world of the health 'industry' made this statement, each in their own context. Signalement spoke with Jan Kimpen, Chief Medical Officer of Royal Philips since January 2016, and with Ruben Kok, director of DTL, Dutch Techcentre for Life Sciences, since January 2014. The reason is the Health RI Conference of December 2016, organized by FHI, at the request of the collaborating organizations that are working together on a coherent Research Infrastructure for Life Sciences in the Netherlands and Europe, and this mainly concerns data, contained in digital systems. It has now become clear that Philips has become a completely different company than the former light bulb factory and the later television manufacturer. But what exactly this complete transformation into a 'Health Tech Company' entails and in what context it is, will only become clear when Jan Kimpen explains it using examples. First, those 'silos'. “Within Philips there are no longer silos of products and product lines. The company is becoming a focused patient-oriented health company. It is a transformation for which we took an important step in May 2016 with the spin-off of Lighting. We then cover the entire patient journey in four domains; oncology, cardiology, respiration (breathing, ed.) and mother and child.” Kimpen now has an overarching position over the entire company. “I joined Philips in 2015 because they wanted an 'outside/in view'. I fit in there as a pediatrician, PhD in the US, twenty years of working in healthcare, first at the UMC Groningen and then Utrecht, and then chairman of the Board of Directors of the UMC Utrecht for seven years. Just as the last period I had set for myself, eight years, ended, the position at Philips became available. I have actually always done Collaborative Research, collaboration between academic institutes with each other and with companies. But now it has become even more important. For Philips this means being responsive to unmet needs. And we are talking about both b-to-b, business to business and b-to-c, personal health. This means doing research together with the market, proving that something works or can work. You need trials for that and then you need hospitals and universities, that's where the patients are that you need for trials.” This indeed brings us to 'data'. What exactly is different from before at a company like Philips? “You can see that in healthcare as a whole. The trend we must move along with is from volume-based care to value-based care. This means that payment is based on the result and no longer on the effort made, outcome-based reimbursement. The paradigm becomes finding means to increase quality while reducing costs. This is possible if you focus on the outcome, the results of a treatment.” According to Kimpen, the transition is also driven by social trends. “Patients and citizens want to take responsibility for their journey through the healthcare landscape. Compare that with mobility without owning a car or driving a taxi without a taxi company. People no longer say 'I'll just sit in the waiting room'. The digital options for self-monitoring fit into this. Access to your own files, making your own appointments. And recover at home as much as possible. Taking control yourself, that is the trend.” Kimpen concludes that these trends have repercussions for how a company like Philips works. “As medical technology companies, we now have to listen to the patient ourselves and offer something other than a 'box with a product and a service contract', such as an MRI scanner. It's about the results of what you do with that scanner.” What does that mean in practice? Philips' collaboration with the Karolisnka University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden, is discussed as an example of 'partnership'. “The new hospital outsources its entire radiology. We call that 'managed equipment service'. The partnership includes the entire workflow, plus the innovation, plus scientific research.” It appears to be a collaboration that has been agreed for at least fifteen years. Philips CEO Frans van Houten has announced that the share of partnerships in turnover will grow year on year, 'end-to-end solutions and especially smart solutions'. A second practical example along the same lines concerns home care. “We are investing heavily in digitalization and connectivity here. A good example is the collaboration with Banner Health in Arizona USA. This non-profit organization in which various hospitals work together in a kind of ecosystem had a cost problem. Using tables and wearable devices and the like, especially for elderly care, a situation could be created that reduced the number of trips to emergency care by 40% and reduced the total costs by more than 20%.” How does Kimpen view the research landscape in the Netherlands? “Philips is first and foremost a global company. But in the meantime, the Benelux as a home market is one of the most important regions. We work with four research 'Hubs' in the world; Shanghai, Bangalore, Cambridge USA and Eindhoven. The Health Technology Campus is set up as an ecosystem in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is the ideal place for some research goals. There are extremely good initiatives going on here. Oncology, for example, is really fantastic in the Netherlands.”