Why is the combination of healthcare and sustainability so interesting but also so crucial? First, the future of healthcare is still being created.

There are still a lot of changes, there are still a lot of unknowns. And the future of healthcare has to be sustainable. But also, the hospital of the future still has to be created, and the hospital of the future can only be a green one. Second point why this is so important is because of the impact.

If global healthcare was a country, are you following me? If global healthcare was a country, it would be the fifth biggest emitter of carbon worldwide. And this is coming from the production of medicine, it is coming from electricity and water, from medical waste, which is really a problem impacting the quality of soil, of water, of air. is impacted by traveling to and from the hospital, but also by medical equipment, for example, produced by Philips.

So, HealthCare overall is responsible for 5% of the global carbon emissions. So it is clear that the health care industry can reduce those emissions without any compromise on patient safety or the quality of care and the access of care. But for that, we have to redefine the concept of health care and to define the hospital of the future. That this is possible, the healthcare transformation during the pandemic has shown. Within a very short time, a lot has happened.

Concepts which were quite strange to us before, telemedicine, that we have the reporting of MRI or CT images not being done in the hospital, but outside, maybe outside in a different country even. or the rise of telemonitoring. All these have been established and accelerated through the pandemic, where the healthcare system has shown a great agility. So it is also possible to adapt to the sustainable needs. Also for us, we are now, and this is not strange anymore, having a remote consultation with our doctor. We don’t need to travel to the hospital, but we can do this from the comfort of our homes. And this reduces unnecessary travel.

I mentioned it before, it’s part of the 5%. And in the United Kingdom, travel related to the national health system adds up to a car circling the globe 1,000 times a day, every day. You can imagine how big that impact is. So, it is also one of the concepts to keep the patients out of the hospital. treat them at home, treat them virtually. And if patients do not need to be physically present at the hospital, you can also imagine that the architecture, that the concept of a hospital building will change dramatically in the future. And this is also an opportunity for new buildings to use a sustainable approach from the very beginning. And we see also alternatives to a hospital.

Today already we know the diagnostic centers, screening centers, but we will also see more and more healthcare being provided by pharmacies or even in a shopping mall. Now, let’s zoom in a little bit into Romania. Alexander Rafila, the Minister of Health, has observed that 80% of the patients who enter an emergency department in a hospital should in principle not be there. 80% should first go to their family doctor, get a consultation there, get the first treatment there.

You can imagine what kind of waste this is, but what it also means for the hospitals. Overcrowded hospitals, and it puts enormous stress on the personnel of a hospital. In Romania, we have seen that the healthcare expenditure has consistently been increased by 14% year on year, which is also necessary because compared to the other European countries in the Union, this is still at the expenditure of HALSKA is still at the lower level. But we have two good news for you.

One is that the local MOH is really active with the National Health Strategy Together for Health. So it’s a commitment to make healthcare more sustainable, to make it smarter, so more digital also, and more resilient, and make this really independent from your income, from your social status, or from where you live. The second good news is there are a lot of EU funds dedicated to healthcare still floating into this country. So it is super important that we make full and the best use of the massive EU funds for Romania. And the EU funds are often linked to sustainability and digitalization.

So why is digitalization so important when we talk about sustainability? Yeah, digitalization means dematerialization. It also means better and easier access of care for patients. And when we talk about digitalization, we also talk about artificial intelligence. There is not one single Philips equipment and solution which is leaving the factory which has not artificial intelligence included. And why is it so important? Why does it help the hospitals?

It can, for example, give the doctors decision support. It can point at a certain illness and say, „You probably want to look at this. This picture is clear, but here you need to spend some more time.” So this is what artificial intelligence is already doing today. So when I think about digitalization and healthcare, and have a little bit of a vision how I live with it, on a good day, I really get excited. Because I assume when I go to the hospital, they have all my records, my health history, my previous exams, the previous surgeries, my allergies.

So when I check into the hospital, not like today, I have to fill in a number of pages, a lot. But this is all there, right? I also expect that artificial intelligence will help me. I will have a smart watch in a couple of years from now, which detects a lot of my health data, maybe even the vital signs. And it will go to a healthcare provider, which will detect from the data which has been sent by my smart watch, will detect any abnormality. So probably before I get the symptoms that I get ill, somebody is calling me and saying, „You better see your doctor. There is something wrong with you.” This is what digitalization will bring to us.

There are already, but of course, on a bad day, I also have bad days, and then I think about the massive amount of data which we have. personally at our fingertips, but also which hospitals and doctors have to deal with. And I also think about data privacy, data security, which is a big thing, especially in healthcare.

You don’t want to see your own data being published, of course. So, within Philips, we have already been very active. We have been partnering with the Champollion-Mont Foundation in Portugal, where we have reduced emissions by 25% in the radiology and nuclear medicine department by bringing in eco-friendly equipment, but also using circular equipment, refurbished equipment, which has the same functionality as new one. And it is all about upgrades, right? If you have a platform on which you can bring the medical equipment always to the latest status, you don’t need to replace that quickly. That has a big impact on sustainability as well.

And in the UK, we have been teaming up on reducing emissions in the ICU department, so in the emergency care department from discharging patients sooner to reducing waste in the supply chain training stuff, but also refurbishing equipment and refurbishing rooms and buildings. So examples like these are already very, very visible and I’m visiting a number of hospitals in Central and Eastern Europe and all of them have a certain interest, a certain commitment to becoming a green hospital.

That is really, really good news. But we need also the local and public authority to support this process. So, they are really encouraged in Romania, but also elsewhere, to integrate environmental criteria much stronger into the procurement process, into the tender data. We see this today not happening often enough. So we would like to see eco-labels and eco-certificates being mandatory for procurement in Europe. But also that suppliers like Philips have to be brutally transparent about their emissions.

And thirdly, we want to see more promoting of circular equipment. I talked about refurbished, which is still in many, if not all, countries of Central and Eastern Europe, not part of public procurement. This is not consequent if you want to have a sustainable politic, of course. And in Romania, green public procurement is limited to only a few areas and is hardly visible in healthcare. So I really urge also the local authorities to support all the good intentions which we see also in this country by stronger guidelines in the procurement and in the tender process. So independent from this, in Philips we are already looking at products which are eco-designed, eco-certified, but we also look at using our resources mindful.

And the most striking example is basically this MRI machine, which in a typical machine, in a standard version, you use 1500 liters of helium to cool the magnet. This system, of Philips, the Blue Seal family, works with 7 liters. 7 liters versus 1500 liters, talking about sustainability impact.

So, in conclusion, We see that there are a lot of good activities already overall. But we do need the governments across Europe to become even stronger in their demands to suppliers, but also to hospitals to really go fully green. So procurement and reimbursement models have to be more supportive for our journey to growth. for sustainability and to protect our Earth. And the hospital of the future, which I mentioned at the beginning, it has to be a combination of the highest technology factor, artificially intelligence being used, as well as the whole digitalization factor, which I mentioned before.

At the same time, it has to be very, very compassionate compassionate for the patients. So it has to remain a very very human touch factor. And thirdly of course we have to take decisive actions and we have to take that compassionate care to the next level, being compassionate for our planet. But I’ve shown a couple of examples that this is possible. And if there are two takeaways from this session, don’t underestimate the importance healthcare has for our planet.

And there’s a lot of contributions healthcare can do in the future, but we also need healthcare to change and become greener going forward. And secondly, Philips is already fully committed to play our part. We do this already today. We are committed to do this even stronger in Romania with our products, but also with our solution. So thank you very much.