In 2020, Philips Foundation made a strategic decision to focus on partnerships with social entrepreneurs to develop healthcare technologies and sustainable models that provide underserved communities with affordable access to healthcare - models that leverage the business and innovation expertise and resources of Philips to facilitate solution development and scale-up.
Philips Foundation helped 50 Healthy Entrepreneurs franchisees in Uganda, small businesses in local communities that sell over-the-counter medicines and health products, to expand their services with diagnostic tools and telehealth services. This resulted in increased public awareness of disease, better insight into patients’ conditions, reduced patient expenses, and increased revenue.
In addition, Philips Foundation provided a loan to CheckUps Medical, a provider of affordable primary healthcare services in Kenya and South Sudan, to help more low-wage families access medicines and care, launch a mobile clinic, and further develop CheckUps’ teleconsultation and home care services that started during the local lockdown. Philips Foundation also enabled the setting up of the Solvoz rapid humanitarian aid procurement platform, as well as the Mondmaskerfabriek, which at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis was the Netherlands’ first surgical face mask manufacturer.
As the Philips foundation moves forward, it will continue to foster innovation and create scalable models that make healthcare provision more equal and open to millions of people in underserved parts of the world.
To read the full Annual Report, click here.
[1] Whitehouse A, Effects of air pollution exposure on child health and do interventions work?, Centre for Genomics and Child Health, Blizard Institute, Queen Mary University of London (UK) https://www.globalactionplan.org.uk/files/effects_of_air_pollution_exposure_by_dr_abigail_whitehouse.pdf