Philips 2007 Annual Report Download - page 11

Healthcare
Our new Healthcare sector brings together Medical
Systems and our growing Home Healthcare Solutions
business – formerly Consumer Healthcare Solutions.
We now deliver innovative solutions – based on the
combination of human insights and clinical expertise –
across the entire care cycle, from the hospital to the
home. We believe the link bridging the hospital and the
home is going to be increasingly important in delivering
better patient outcomes while containing costs.
In the hospital market we strengthened our global
leadership in critical care with the acquisition of VISICU,
providing advanced IT solutions for monitoring of
patients in the intensive care unit.
Complementary to our established leadership position
in the professional healthcare technology market, our
proposed acquisition of Respironics – a leading US-based
global provider of innovative respiratory and sleep therapy
solutions for hospital and home use – is part of our strategy
to create a global leadership position in the fast-growing
home healthcare solutions market as well. Given the
unsustainably high healthcare costs in many markets
and increased emphasis on both efciency and patient
comfort, we are seeing a gradual shift towards diagnosing,
treating and monitoring patients in their homes rather
than in hospitals. Demand for home healthcare is also
growing due to the increasing number of elderly people
and the rising incidence of chronic diseases. With our
expertise in consumer insights in the consumer lifestyle
space, we feel we are ideally positioned to be one of the
leading companies driving this emerging trend.
Completion of this stage of our acquisition drive will create
a Healthcare sector with sales of over EUR 7 billion going
forward and global leadership positions in areas such as
cardiac care, acute care, and now also home healthcare. We
will continue to grow our business organically and further
expand protability by maintaining our focus on operational
excellence and by leveraging our 2007 acquisitions.
Lighting
In both the professional and consumer domains,
Philips Lighting is increasingly shifting its focus towards
applications, rather than products, supported by the
growing demand for energy-efcient solutions and the
rise of solid-state lighting. In 2007 we underscored our
ambitions by completing a number of major acquisitions
– totaling EUR 1.2 billion – to boost growth and position
ourselves for the future.
Philips Annual Report 200714
8 Financial highlights 10 Message from the President 16 The Philips Group 62 The Philips sectors