Royal Philips has announced that the US government and Philips agreed to team up to increase the production of hospital ventilators in its manufacturing sites in the USA.
Philips plans to double the production by May 2020 and achieve a four-fold increase by the third quarter of 2020 for supply to the US and global markets. Such ventilators are critical for the treatment of patients with the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Philips will invest several tens of millions in its ventilator manufacturing sites in the USA.
“We are actively collaborating with the US government to help save lives in the USA and across the globe,” said Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Philips. “There is an unprecedented global demand for medical equipment to help diagnose and treat patients with COVID-19. We welcome the support of the US government in our efforts to aggressively increase the production of hospital ventilators.”
He continued: “We believe in fair allocation of scarce medical equipment to those who need it the most, and we are ramping up to deliver 43,000 units to the most critical regions in the U.S. in the coming weeks and months through December 2020.”
In line with the recent call to action by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and World Health Organization (WHO), Philips and the US government have agreed to work together to accelerate access to critical materials and components, expedite logistics and regulatory approvals, in order to rapidly increase the production of ventilators.
In the first three months of this year, Philips already delivered several thousand ventilators to US hospitals. As a result of its production ramp up, Philips was able to deliver an additional batch of ventilators to one of New York’s hospitals, to help provide immediate relief to the surge of COVID-19 patients within the city.
Philips believes that critical medical equipment, such as hospital ventilators, should be made available across the world using a fair and ethical approach to allocate supply to acute patient demands based on data such as the COVID-19 statistics per country/region (e.g. provided by the WHO and Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center) and the available critical care capacity. Philips may divide orders into batches to be delivered in phases, so that the company can simultaneously serve multiple countries/regions in need.
