Support beyond donations

Apart from earthquakes and floods, the past few years have mainly been marked by man-made disasters, and more turmoil lies ahead. When this happens, Philips Foundation will again be asked to respond, to help relieve the suffering of people urgently needing medical help. In such cases, we are able to provide medical equipment to support those impacted, often with the help of donations from Philips employees.

Philips Foundation’s focus is, nevertheless, not on responding to crises: our mission is to create lasting access to healthcare services for underserved communities worldwide.

We do this in two ways:

•  We support projects (donation-based), where we explore, in partnership with healthcare-providing organizations and academic parties, whether new technology-assisted ways of working can save lives. For instance,by taking portable screening devices closer to the patient for earlier detection of cardiovascular diseases, tumors, or risks during pregnancies. The aim is then to scale these ways of working when the project proves that it brings better outcomes for patients. 

• We create lasting access to healthcare services through our impact investments. We invest in social enterprises with innovative approaches that can make healthcare affordable and accessible for underserved populations. By issuing loans and equity, we help ventures with the same mission in healthcare for underserved communities to get to the point where they can attract the extra capital needed to start scaling their business.

Together with our partners, we unlocked medical services for 28 million people in 2023. Our goal to provide access to healthcare to 100 million people in underserved communities by 2030 means that we still need to speed up to make a substantial impact.

Technology can help accelerate healthcare provision, and build bridges between the communities where people live and medical specialists elsewhere, if not available in the local environment. Artificial intelligence enables non-medically educated people – given proper training – to collect healthcare data from patients, while maintaining the highest standards of quality and safety.

Good entrepreneurship implies looking beyond financial returns alone, and adding value for people and our planet as well. Considering the challenging socio-economic situation of underserved populations, we focus on the viability of the ventures and their envisioned impact at the same time, helping create access to medical services that people can rely on.

Margot Cooijmans
Director of Philips Foundation and Philips Foundation Impact Investments B.V.

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Download Philips Foundation's 2023 Annual Report