Philips India, a subsidiary of Royal Philips, the Netherlands-based diversified technology company is planning to offer services such as healthcare transformation, hospital infrastructure advisory and remote monitoring of ICUs, instead of confining itself to the healthcare equipment space. It expects these services to account for 15 percent of its healthcare revenues from India in the next four years.
Sameer Garde, president, South Asia, Philips Healthcare told the Business Standard newspaper that home healthcare and hospital infrastructure advisory services are going to be big areas that promise exponential growth for Philips.
According to estimates, the overall Indian health care market is $65 billion, of which the hospital supplies and health care equipment segment is believed to be only around $4.5-$5 million.
Garde projected that India would need approximately 600,000 and 700,000 additional beds over the next five to six years, which created potential opportunities for business upwards of $25-30 billion. “While the existing hospitals would look at expanding their capabilities, a lot of new properties would also come up. We want to provide end-to-end services in this space, starting from hospital design and development, engineering, procurement and program management,” Garde added.
Philips also aims to expand its tele-health or eICU program to cover a greater number of smaller cities and rural areas. Under this program, hospital chains in bigger cities with experienced physicians served as command centers that managed ICUs in smaller cities and towns remotely. Philips has already connected around 700 ICU beds of hospitals across some 8-10 cities. In the next four years, it expects the number to grow 15-20 times.