People want to have a healthier life and live longer, and technology can empower them to be healthy, live well and enjoy life.
Royal Philips chief executive Frans van Houten speaks at the recent Philips Innovation Experience expo in Eindhoven.
Royal Philips NV, a diversified conglomerate active in the areas of electronics, health and well-being, understands this important trend and now focuses on creating innovations mostly in the spheres of health care and lighting, the two main focuses of the 123-year-old company.
The Dutch giant on Sept 21 announced it would spin off its historic lighting operations into a stand-alone company and combine its healthcare and consumer-lifestyle divisions into a health-tech company.
"It's a next logical step for our journey. The change will help us boost investment and grow faster. We'll position both companies for long-term market leadership, enabling them to innovate and address customer needs even better and faster," chief executive Frans van Houten says.
To support its goal, Philips showcased a host of its latest innovations at the recent Philips Innovation Experience expo in Eindhoven, the small city where Gerard and Anton Philips created their first incandescent bulbs and set a strong ambition to transform the healthcare industry and sell lighting services to make cities safer and more beautiful.
Most of the new creations have an internet-connected feature allowing users to connect to them even from other locations.
The chief executive says the healthcare industry has much potential, and Philips has set a mission to improve the lives of 3 billion people by 2025.
Today's consumers want to monitor and manage their health, be it the air they breathe, the food they eat or their personal hygiene.
At the same time, governments are looking for ways to deliver better and more affordable health care beyond hospital walls.
They also want to empower healthcare professionals to cooperate more effectively and deliver better diagnoses and treatments.
"Health care has to be delivered as an integrated service across the entire continuum of care. This runs from healthy living and prevention to diagnosis and treatment and recovery and homecare," Mr Van Houten says.
As for the lighting industry, he says it is experiencing the largest transformation since the invention of the light bulb.
LEDs and connected lighting technologies are catalysing the shift from lighting products to lighting solutions and systems.
While still valuable for the illumination it provides, artificial light will increasingly create social and economic value by making buildings and cities safer, more beautiful and energy efficient.
The global population is expected to hit 9 billion by 2050, meaning greater demand for food, water and energy.
Urbanisation means larger cities with often more than 20 million people in need of a safe, healthy and inspiring environment.
Philips has been working with the government of Aruba to ensure the Caribbean island meets its goal of using 100% sustainable energy by 2020.
"We mapped the entire island's lighting service and designed LED solutions for public buildings and outdoor lighting. These are so efficient that Aruba expects to achieve energy savings of up to 80% and lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by up to 4,000 tonnes annually," Mr Van Houten says.
Trends in Thailand
Thais, like their peers around the globe, are becoming more concerned about their personal health and well-being as well as the environment.
"We've seen changing demand in the healthcare industry in Thailand. Doctors demand effective solutions that can support a clinical decision to enhance patient care," says Viroj Vithayaveroj, managing director of Philips Electronics (Thailand).
"Thanks to today's tech innovations that are becoming more embedded in our lives, however, with the massive data collected on critical care patients, focusing on the information specifically needed can be a challenge."
Philips understands what patient care needs and developed a solution to address the challenges. For example, its IntelliSpace Critical Care and Anesthesia provides clarity with filtered overviews of a patient's condition drawn from vast amounts of information.
For the lighting market, demand for energy-saving products has grown significantly in recent years due to rising concerns about global oil prices, a shortage of energy resources and global warming.
These issues have pushed many organisations to seek proper energy-saving solutions to deal with the concerns.
Lighting alone accounts for an estimated 20% of global electricity use.
If all existing lighting systems can be converted to energy-saving solutions, this will not only save energy resources but also dramatically cut CO2 emissions.
Switching to LED bulbs, which are retrofit and can easily replace conventional bulbs in homes, will immediately save up to 85% of a household's usual energy consumption.
The products also have a long-lasting life of 15 years and are environmentally friendly since they contain no mercury.
A little girl enjoys the healthy benefits of Philips' new smart air purifier.
A glimpse of the future
Here are some of the healthcare and lighting innovations displayed at the Philips Innovation Experience, which ran from Sept 29 to Oct 1. They will be introduced for commercial sale in the near future.
Blue Control
Philips has developed a wearable drug-free therapy that controls mild to moderate psoriasis vulgaris with blue LED light, reducing the redness, scaling, thickness and extent of psoriasis vulgaris, a chronic, incurable skin disease that can affect every aspect of a patient's life. It's an effective at-home therapy that can easily be integrated into a patient's daily routine.
Visiq
This transducer-plus-tablet ultrasound device delivers the image quality of a cart-based system. Ultra mobile and easy to use, it allows clinicians to perform quality diagnostic obstetric, gynaecological and abdominal scans anywhere, from hospital labour rooms to remote rural locations. This portable device is suitable for rural areas far from hospitals, so that the midwife can consult a doctor when she notices any irregularities while performing a scan on a pregnant woman.
Smart air purifier
This purifier was created specially for the Chinese market. It combines Philips' state-of-the-art chemical-free filtration technology with advanced mobile technology to help you track and control air quality in real-time via your smartphone. The purifier helps to remove indoor contaminants including bacteria, gases, fine dust, pollen and pet hair from your home. The app allows you to adjust or pre-programme settings from wherever you are, gives you access to indoor and outdoor air quality indexes and sends alerts when air quality reaches unsafe levels.
Indoor positioning with LED
Philips is piloting a connected lighting system that gives new meaning to personalised shopping. The system uses connected LED in-store lighting to communicate location-based information to shoppers via a smartphone app that they can opt to download. The lighting communicates with the app to send special offers and information to the shopper, relevant to their location in the store.