Healthy citizens ensure a healthy economy

23 Nov Healthy citizens ensure a healthy economy

Mr. Ignacio López Parrilla, Director of Institutional Relations and Business Development, Philips Ibérica emphasizes the urgency for prioritizing investment in eHealth

You were appointed in 2018 to represent Philips Ibérica with the aim of supporting public administrations with innovative proposals that respond to the current challenges of the health system. COVID-19 presented unprecedented challenges to the global health system and to the health system in Spain, which is a combination of state and regional management. How was your experience before COVID-19 and during the pandemic? What is your assessment of the last couple of years?

To begin with, I have more than 30 years of experience in medical technology, and prior to 2020, we were under the impression that Spain had a superior national health service, ranking near the top in the list of countries with the longest life expectancy rates worldwide. Our transplant organization is renowned globally, we have excellent clinical outcomes, and our efficiency is said to be superior to our neighbors in the region in terms of expenditures being below per capita. COVID-19 was a harsh blow to this reality and demonstrated just how fragile the structure actually is and exposed its weaknesses, namely its rigidity and disjointed nature.

We tackled the issues through heavy involvement of our professionals and the principal conclusion was that the effort of healthcare staff was key. We had to reinvent the way we were working as a stakeholder with platforms running 24×7; worldwide searches for the appropriate technology was in high demand, complex installations and training professionals in their use was required in what proved to be an extremely difficult situation. It was tremendously difficult to provide all the systems or tech required to meet the demand. As a result, we had to revamp the system. It is clear for both citizens and professionals alike that healthcare needs to undergo a change in how it operates to become more flexible, more IT based, more connected and incorporate innovative ways of running processes such as telemedicine, to name just one example.

The pandemic absolutely accelerated the digital transformation. Had it not been for COVID, we would not be conducting this interview over a videocall. Nowadays, not only professionals, but patients are seeking out this kind of contact. It is much more convenient to now be able to call your doctor and discuss your issues and possible treatments. Of course, certain patients such as the elderly need some kind of physical contact. However, perhaps this may take the form of a different type of professional. We have to rethink the way we do things now in the healthcare system in general.

Philips Ibérica is leader in Personal Health, Health in Hospitals and Respiratory Health. Could you share a bit more information on these three areas and explain where and how Philips Ibérica is making an impact on the Spanish health system and on people’s lives?

In Philips, we look at the complete life cycle of a person. Of course, we work on Personal Health solutions and general wellness, but we aspire to encourage and create awareness around self-care practices and leading a healthy life. In general, the majority of people here do experience this for most of their lives. However, sooner or later, we all need a hospital or primary care attention. This is why we are working diligently on preventing disease and on early detection. In any kind of illness, the earlier it is detected the better, to act before disease can spread. Extensive work is being done on various diagnostic systems to facilitate screening and even self-care itself, be it with wearables and personal consultants to prevent or inform clients that a certain trend may lead to an illness. Quick and accurate diagnostics means avoiding unnecessary testing. This is another area of expertise – developing solutions that ensure a process only needs to be run once to prescribe the most effective treatment. Any deviation from that is wasteful for the system and dangerous for the patient. It is key to get it right the first time and administrators need to learn that quality should be prioritized over price. Buying tests at a lower price may mean that they will need to repeat tests which is not effective.

Aside from diagnostics we are also working steadfastly on treatments, designing solutions which facilitate the least invasive procedures using AI and virtual reality. In extremely sophisticated interventions in highly sensitive areas in vital organs, VR can reveal exactly where to act with precision and safety. The less invasive, the quicker the recovery, and the most likely that recovery can take place at home. It does not make any sense for someone to be in a hospital bed for three or four days. Not only does it put the patient at potential risk, but recovery can also be excelled when they are in a comfortable and familiar environment.

All of these things are supported by a solid base of IT solutions which prevent the typical isolated work in silos. In healthcare, one of the areas for contribution that we strive towards as a company is to provide uninterrupted information throughout the whole cycle. Digital health, interconnected platforms, and data management is what makes this possible. This is the area where we are focused the most, in general, expanding more and more towards the promotion of healthy lifestyles. This translates into more customers for Philips and more data which combined with our experience in hospitals in critical procedures, we are able to provide numerous algorithms and components to reduce health risks and support health leadership.

Specifically in Spain, Philips’s technology is behind over 50 percent of cardiac exams, more than 70 percent of natal monitoring, and 50 percent of ICU beds. Due to our reputation and expertise, we have come to occupy quite a privileged space in terms of supplying and assisting hospitals in these areas in particular.

How important is innovation, digitalization and technologies such as AI, the internet of things, wearable technology, and Block-chain for the health sector? What are the major trends and how will they transform the sector?

When we talk about innovation, the MedTech sector is the most innovative technology space. The European Patent Office comes in handy to back up this claim because if you count the number of patents registered per sector in the annual reports, you will be amazed to find that there are more in MedTech than for computers, biotech, pharma, and even communications. This means that innovation is clearly an inherent part of medical technology. I am delighted to work for Philips because in the last decade of reports, we have always been ranked in the top three which means that we are heavily supplying this kind of innovation to the market.

Innovation in healthcare comes in the form of wearables, the internet of medical things and interconnected platforms to effect change in prevention, control and monitoring, which goes hand in hand with healthy lifestyles, one of the earliest elements of control. Elderly people living at home can also easily be connected to monitor and prevent any deviation from homeostasis. Every alert helps to set off a chain reaction to act quickly and effectively.

Another facet of connectivity means that we no longer need to be physically present. This is already in effect in the communication between professionals sharing knowledge to make the right decisions. We are steadily moving towards a more and more multidisciplinary decision-making process. An oncologist works together with a radiologist and a pathologist to define what kind of tumor you have and how best to treat it. Communication is key in that regard, not only between professionals but between professionals and patients. The face of medicine is changing in this respect.

Finally, in Spain specifically we have a robust electronic patient records system which is essentially the basis of a first-rate digital healthcare service. Maintaining all the documents in electronic form ensures that you can share them amongst professionals and centers. What is now important at least to address is the change from document-based systems to databased systems, meaning we have a lot of clinical information in pdf format. We need extractable data to be able to use it, apply elements such as algorithms to look for the right data at the right moment to combine with other data and through these algorithms, support professional technicians. This is the biggest challenge for healthcare centers in terms of digitalization, moving from document-based records to structured data-based records.

Can you tell us about Philips’ business performance throughout the pandemic?

Indeed, COVID has had an impact on all industries. Some of them suffered immensely because they were completely paralyzed by its effects. In the case of medical technology, we might describe it as a bit polarized perhaps. On the one hand, the conversion of hospitals into COVID treatment centers or entire wings of hospitals into ICUs meant that there was a huge demand on a specific technology. Pharma was perhaps less impacted, but structural technology, meaning installation, interconnection, and training for interaction was more difficult to implement. You could say we had highs and lows. Companies that had a huge focus on products related to ICUs, critically ill and respiratory patients had a huge demand of products. The fact is that not in all cases were they able to meet the demand. Even if they could multiply work capacity 24×7 operating new manufacturing processes in order to serve the extremely high demand, processes take time and also depend on suppliers to send the right components to build the systems. On the other hand, companies more present in oncology or natal care, which are two other areas of our products, had almost no activity or sales. Essentially, in some areas there was nothing while in others there was almost too much. As a consequence, I would say we improved results a bit because we supplied more than double the number of respirators and patient monitors in the ICU than the previous year, but other areas such as cardiac intervention or maternity care declined.

We cannot say it was indisputably positive. We did our best in terms of serving. I must say that I saw a huge response from the employees to voluntarily do their best to serve. It was like a personal commitment they made to society and people held precedence over any other matter. There was a clear demonstration of the importance of humanity to the organization.

A number of global corporations are setting some key offices in Barcelona and the neighboring area. Alongside global organizations, this month the unicorn Wallabox made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange while the other famous unicorn Glovo may do the same next year. Furthermore, there is a long list of new start-ups growing in Barcelona and expanding regionally and internationally. Is Barcelona the current Mediterranean hub for innovation? If not, do you see the potential? What can you share about your company base in Barcelona? Does Philips Ibérica support startups or innovative disruptive projects?

Barcelona has a lot of the required ingredients to be considered an innovation hub, not only in Europe but on a global level. The main ingredient in my opinion is talent, and this includes many young professionals graduating from very powerful schools such as University of Barcelona, Pompeu Fabra, and others. They have superior programs to train professionals in healthcare technology. UPC for engineering has one of the most innovative and active universities in the field and the Health Economics program at Pompeu Fabra is internationally acclaimed. In terms of knowledge and preparing professionals it is absolutely differential.

However, Barcelona is extremely attractive to people, not only for students from other countries to come and earn a degree, but even for people of all ages to come settle down here. It attracts quite diverse and international talent, and with this we have the raw material for innovation which are bright people which is one of the most important elements.

If you look at Barcelona, there are also plenty of international business schools as well as international schools for the children of our professionals coming from abroad. In Catalonia you have high mountains to practice sky and a very nice coast and beaches, the standard of living is extremely high, the food is spectacular, there are more hours of daylight than in other countries, and the cultural flavor is extremely attractive, just to name a few advantages.

From an institutional point of view, there are some bodies with a very active innovation process launching programs in Europe. In the healthcare area they are very active in building a consortium or a base to attract innovation especially for startups. From Philips we are actively working with universities under Philips Research which is separate in terms of operational activity. On the one hand we conduct promotional activity to promote products and on the other we have our research arm of the business.

Barcelona and Catalonia in general have a very innovative way of doing things in that it is natural for them to function well outside their comfort zone. They are very active in implementing innovative procurement processes such as going with a supplier or a partner to build something that is a little bit beyond the norm. We are actively working on creating innovations. For instance, in the Hospital Vall d’Hebron, one of the main hospitals in Barcelona, we built a smart ICU which is a group of elements that not only includes all the tech required to provide excellent care, but also the possibility to communicate between professionals. Time is key to reacting to a clinically ill patient’s situation and information is circulated between all the professionals instantly. The atmosphere is also enhanced with lighting to recreate day and night which helps to reduce dementia and stress in patients that in some cases have no idea as to what time of day it may be. When a cardiac arrest occurs in the ICU, everything turns dark and a red light is turned on above the door of the affected patient facilitating quick action on behalf of the professionals. We recreate an atmosphere that facilitates quick reactions and comfort and makes the hospital experience more human for patients and more effective not only with sophisticated tech, but even with the most basic tech like lighting. This is only one example. Another one is that Catalonia is the most advanced in moving from the classic purchasing process of expensive systems to pay-per-use agreements in some cases. You don’t always know how great a demand you are going to have for this type of technology, so you can share the risk with the supplier, moving to a different concept of technology as an enabler to perform a procedure. Philips Ibérica is very much a pioneer in all of these different segments.

What should a smart-city’s health system look like in your view?

We have a claim that says, “healthy people in a sustainable planet”. This is Philips’s message, and we are working on that. Elaborating on that, cities must be developed to envision the citizen as its center. This requires appropriate access, environmental issues, communication and hence many elements of transformation. Nowadays we are not talking about the classical concept of a city.

They are currently holding the COP26 climate summit regarding sustainability which is an urgent affair. In Philips we have been working for years on this and we are already CO2 neutral in our operations in. For me, this is the way. I don’t know if it is a dream, but it is the path that cities need to take using renewable energies, reducing traffic, limiting emissions, and getting on top of global warming. This is a huge challenge. However, if a company that has factories and mass production has achieved CO2 neutrality, a Smart city can do it too; at least it has to be their objective.

As for us, we don’t want to just stop there. Now we are working with our partners and suppliers to share this knowledge and help them act in the same way. We think that this will multiply the effect. At the end of the day you are talking about many additional companies which can also be extrapolated to cities. We need to learn from the most advanced cities in the area of sustainability and apply this knowledge to ourselves, putting all political rivalries aside and doing the best for our citizens. That is far from politics. It is just common sense.

Is there anything else you would like to share with the readers of Newsweek?

I would just mention that 30 percent of European Recovery and Resilience funding should be focused on digital and more than 30 percent on sustainability. These two topics are of utmost importance. My concern in terms of healthcare revolves around how important it is to have healthy citizens to ensure a healthy economy. There is no economy without health, which means that even in this case, the opportunity to transform healthcare systems into a more digital interconnected system with a transparent flow of funding would be a great opportunity to address what I mentioned before. If you check out chapter 18 of the Spanish report, España Puede, you will see that there is around 1 billion euros allocated for healthcare resilience, and a big part of it is meant to renew technology, which was a problem that we had in Spain specifically with one of the oldest medical technology installations. In digital we do not see specifically defined budgets fully devoted to that. Look at our neighbors. Germany has a 4.6-billion-euro future hospital project. Italy has a 4-billion-euro expansion for chronic and telemedicine. Portugal has more than 300 million euros dedicated to digital health. The only element you can see in the Spanish program is 100 million for a heath data repository, which in my humble opinion is not enough to move to eHealth. In order to truly transform the health system, it needs to become much more digital.