Philips to Ditch Consumer Appliances Unit, Focus on Connected Care

Stung by poor 2019 earnings in its connected care business, Philips is shedding its consumer appliances division to focus on healthcare, including telemedicine and mHealth.

The Dutch technology giant, which had already spun off its signature consumer electronics and lighting businesses, announced this week that it will either sell or spin off the appliances segment, which manufactures everything from coffee makers to air fryers. The company plans on directing all its resources to personal health, diagnosis and treatment technology, data management and connected care, including remote patient monitoring.

“Everybody’s going in that direction,” CEO Frans van Houten said during a conference call with new reporters. “As a technology company, we can do our part in helping providers optimize their processes, take waste out, and get a better return on capital equipment and staff utilization.”

“We can help measure patient-reported outcomes, we can measure real-world health impacts, (and then) we start correlating all that so that you can create an integrated picture,” he added.

The healthcare unit’s struggles have also prompted the company to replace Carla Kriwet, its connected care business leader and a frequent attendee of healthcare conferences in the US, with Roy Jakobs, who heads Philips’ personal health segment.

Philips has a hand in a number of telehealth and mHealth programs in the US, including tele-ICU platforms, hospital-based monitoring, mHealth platforms for home-based healthcare and remote patient monitoring services for, among other things, sleep issues.

Moving forward, van Houten expects Philips to focus more intently on value-based care.

“I think (the next decade will focus on) where the business model in healthcare is going to tilt towards measurements of value,” he said in the conference call. “In other words, the real-world evidence of healthcare impacts on populations, individual patients and much better transparency in costs.”