Philips employees step-up in the fight against COVID-19

Charmae Pearson has been with Philips for more than 14 years, helping to build Trilogy ventilators and motors at Philips manufacturing facility in Murrysville, Pennsylvania. Anyone who meets her knows she wears a smile to work as often as she wears her closed-toed shoes. When she and her colleagues realized that they were working on one of the most in-demand medical supplies in the world, her smile didn’t fade. It grew. 

“It’s amazing to know that what we do every single day changes people’s lives and allows them to breathe easier,” she said.  “I felt thankful that I could help to make a difference.”

And she’s not alone. Today, as the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19) persists throughout the global community, Philips is steadfast in its commitment to support health systems and healthcare professionals who entrust us to help them care for their patients. While people all over the world are being told to work from home, many Philips employees throughout Western Pennsylvania and Carlsbad, California are working tirelessly and fearlessly to continue assembling, testing, and distributing life-saving medical equipment to those in need. They do this because they know that Philips solutions – like invasive and noninvasive ventilation, oxygen therapy, CPAP therapy, nebulizers, patient monitoring, ultrasound systems, and medical consumables – can help health systems, clinicians and their patients as they navigate this complex and dynamic environment.

As ventilator demand continues to grow, Philips continues to maintain its focus on quality and patient safety, while working hard – and differently – together. Priorities are being refocused to meet the needed demand and are using a planned approach to accelerate these efforts, including ramping up productions. Philips has committed to doubling hospital ventilator production by May and quadrupling by the third quarter of 2020. Today's ventilators, like those produced by Philips, are not typically produced in large volumes. They contain more than one million lines of code and more than 650 highly complex, high-reliability components such as high precision sensors, high performance motor blowers, and numerous complex software algorithms, which makes quadrupling production in mere months a truly herculean effort. It means Philips is hiring dozens of new manufacturing workers in Pennsylvania alone to meet the need. And it means current employees are working harder than ever to make a difference.

From its Sleep and Respiratory headquarters in Western Pennsylvania to global headquarters in Amsterdam, the entire Philips family recognizes the significant sacrifices many employees are making to support these efforts.

“The urgency and fluidity of the situation continues to impact our business, our customers and our employees around the world,” says John Frank, Business Leader, Sleep and Respiratory Care, Philips. “As a company we remain focused on our triple duty of care to ensure the health and safety of employees, fulfill critical customer needs, and ensure business continuity. I am proud of the entire Sleep and Respiratory Care team, including Philips production and supply crews, and the many others across Philips who are stepping up, collaborating and driving this massive undertaking including the rapid scale-up of manufacturing of urgently needed products during this crisis.”

“Philips shares heartfelt gratitude to those who cannot stay home, at Philips and beyond,” added Frank. “From healthcare workers to mail carriers, food service workers and sanitation crews, we see you and we thank you. We hope that, like Charmae, you feel proud of the work that you are doing to make a difference in the health and lives of those around you.” 

Philips is committed to its mission of improving lives, and that passion is intensified in these challenging times.