Healthcare for everyone, everywhere
Siemens Healthineers pioneers breakthroughs in healthcare. For everyone. Everywhere. By constantly bringing breakthrough innovations to market, it enables healthcare professionals to deliver high-quality care, leading to the best possible outcome for patients. The portfolio, spanning from in-vitro and in-vivo diagnostics to image-guided therapy and innovative cancer care, is crucial for clinical decision-making and treatment pathways.
Built on a history of innovation going back more than 125 years and with unique strengths in patient twinning, precision therapy, as well as digital, data, and artificial intelligence (AI), the company is well positioned to take on the biggest challenges in healthcare. It will continue to build on these strengths to help fight the world’s most threatening diseases, improving the quality of outcomes, and enabling access to care.
As a leader in the industry, it aspires to create better outcomes and experiences for patients no matter where they live or what health issues they are facing.
Siemens Healthineers innovates sustainably to develop scalable solutions that can be tailored to the needs of healthcare providers, and the local health infrastructures. Motivated by its purpose and guided by its values, the company is building an inclusive culture and embracing diversity in all its forms. The team of 66,000 highly dedicated employees across more than 70 countries passionately pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in healthcare to help improve people’s lives around the world.
International Hospital speaks to Siemens Healthineers about sustainability and increasing access to healthcare.
Sustainability
International Hospital: Sustainability is a key issue now as we face the devastating prospect of runaway climate change. What is Siemens Healthineers doing with regards implementing sustainability initiatives within the company?
Siemens Healthineers has a Sustainability Program which reflects the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The company has set clear targets for Fiscal Year 2030 and established a Sustainability Office headed by Dr Maiya Shibasaki. To deliver on the company purpose “We pioneer breakthroughs in healthcare. For everyone. Everywhere,” we focus on four key areas:
• Access & Innovation: Improve quality of life through access to healthcare and innovation
• Environment: Contribute to a regenerative and healthy environment
• Social: Advance diversity & inclusion and drive employee engagement
• Governance: Create sustainable value through responsible business and leadership
IH: On what areas within the company are these sustainability initiatives focussed – administrative operations, manufacturing processes, product design, for example?
• We see ‘increasing access to health care’ as a sustainability initiative as mentioned earlier. These two things are intertwined for us.
• Environment: The company has an ambitious CO2 emission reduction target. We have measures and programmes in place to achieve this target. We plan to become carbon neutral in our own operations by Fiscal Year 2030. For example, the new factories in Forchheim (Germany) and Bengaluru (India) will operate carbon neutral.
IH: What are some of the main challenges Siemens Healthineers is facing with regards implementing these initiatives? How are they being resolved?
All our targets are challenging. To reach these goals we require strong commitment, proactive engagement, collaboration, partnerships, and a systematic approach. To reach all of this we have established the Sustainability Office reporting directly to the board to get one big collaborative initiative rather than many small, siloed projects.
IH: What are the company’s goals with regards sustainability and is it on track to meet them?
We have set key performance indicators to be reached by FY 2025. For example:
• We will increase the number of patient touchpoints in underserved countries from 147 million to 220 million.
• We will decrease our net CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions from scope 1 and 2 to annual 130 kt (in 2019: 197 kt) < https://ghgprotocol.org >
• We want to increase the share of women in senior management to 26% (FY20: 17%) and have made some serious progress already.
Access to health care
IH: As a global healthcare corporate, Siemens Healthineers no doubt touches the lives of many people around the world. The company is also known for developing some of the most advanced medical technologies on the market which have a very important place in advancing healthcare, but they are often expensive and the number of people who can access these technologies is limited. On the other hand, there is a movement within the industry to increase access to healthcare by developing more affordable medical technologies and more portable technologies to widen the scope of access to these medical devices particularly in low-income countries. How important is the idea of increasing access to healthcare within Siemens Healthineers?
We have a very clear purpose: “We pioneer breakthroughs in healthcare. For everyone. Everywhere.” This purpose reflects the core idea of providing quality healthcare to everyone, no matter which part of the world they live in. Moreover, being a leader in the healthcare industry, it is our privilege and obligation to enable access to quality healthcare.
IH: What is the company doing to facilitate increased access to healthcare technology?
About three billion people worldwide do not have access to basic healthcare facilities. These underserved communities largely reside in low and middle-income countries.
Considering these circumstances, our Access to Care focus is on:
• Fighting the most threatening non-communicable diseases using our existing strong product portfolio and our value-added services like Education, Customer Services, Digitalization and Logistics
• Partnering with renowned organisations to maximise the reach and improve patient outcomes
• Increasing patient touchpoints and supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Good health and well-being and Partnerships for the goals).
Some of the initiatives that we have undertaken are partnerships with UNICEF, World Economic Forum, C Can and similar other well established social organizations.
The Mobilett Elara Max is a mobile digital X-ray system designed for flexible care directly at the patient’s bedside.
