Philips continues to make moves in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in response to trending market growth and increasing health care demands.

One key is that the region is aging — the number of people over age 60 is projected to hit 1.3 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations.

“APAC’s rapidly aging population and finite medical resources require a rethink of how, and where, health care is provided,” Caroline Clarke, CEO for Philips Asean Pacific, told The Nation Thailand Portal.

New technology will allow addressing this by creating better resource allocation and management, both for personnel and equipment. “This is a focus area for us,” she said. “Our teams have been pioneering the use of telehealth technologies to help specialist doctors ‘see’ more patients, while also developing remote access solutions to safely extend the provision of medical care outside the four walls of hospitals, to the home, and remote corners of the world.”

Her group has also invested heavily in the region recently. Just last year the company unveiled a new regional headquarters in Singapore.

And this year it announced a partnership with Singapore-based EDBI to make investments in regional digital health technology, which Clarke told the publication, “remains a focus for us for 2018 and beyond.”

Beyond that, in July, Philips and the Singapore Institute of Advanced Medicine Holdings, in collaboration with Varian Medical Systems and IBA Worldwide, announced plans to build the new Advanced Medicine Oncology Centre in Singapore.

Helping spur interest – and investments – in APAC are results from the latest Future Health Index study, backed by Philips. It looked at 19 countries to gauge health system preparedness for future challenges and determined that Asia ranks high in its understanding of the importance of connected care technology – especially wearables and trackers, home monitoring systems and live telehealth options.

This sets the stage for advances that are yet to come in rolling out such approaches, and also for a move toward earlier health care interventions. “The second trend that we are seeing in APAC is a mindset shift, amongst both the general population and health care providers, that prevention is more important than treatment,” stressed Clarke.

This opens the market for health lifestyle gear – from healthier cooking equipment to air purifiers, to healthy baby products, and the like, she noted.

And thanks to the high Internet penetration levels in the region – which has over 45 percent of all Internet users worldwide – there is a huge opportunity to leverage this digital access in the health care space.

“At Philips, we are also working hard to develop mobile technologies to increase access to health care in remote areas, which will be key to improving the overall health of APAC in the future,” said Clarke, citing the company's partnership with Bunda Medical Center in Padang, West Sumatra, a leading maternity center.

“We developed a pilot program using an app that enables midwives to build a relevant health profile of pregnant women by collecting data from physical examinations and tests and local nursing clinics, or even at the soon to-be mother’s home.” she said. This permits them to upload information to a central OB server for obstetricians and gynecologists to use to remotely monitor pregnancies for those mothers in more remote regions.

This is an example of the future direction for Philips and health care in general. “We expect medical innovations to focus on empowering people to be more active in their own health, and to use medical resources in a more efficient and effective way,” she said.