Perhaps more worrying is that the new venture has done little to aid what was the biggest issue for Toshiba and Canon pre-acquisition: a lack of global presence in healthcare informatics. In diagnostic and clinical care health provision, analytics and operational intelligence are going to be the new growth markets and battlegrounds for the leading health technology vendors. Apart from market leadership in advanced visualisation for radiology and cardiology (Vital Images) the new Canon Medical Systems business has very little health informatics coverage in comparison to its peers. Therefore, to really become a world-leading health technology vendor, it will quickly need to establish a strong partnership model or strategy to address this need.
Philips: Sitting Pretty, for now
As its peers all undergo periods of significant uncertainty and change, Philips looks to be well placed to profit in the coming years. Following a bold re-engineering of its business over the last five years, fuelled by cash reserves from selling its lighting division, it has been actively acquiring assets in imaging informatics, cardiology and population health management to complement its already broad health and wellness portfolio. Of the big four, one could argue it is currently best placed to capitalise while its peers re-invent themselves.
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However, it has challenges of its own to overcome. Traditionally not known, for its ability to handle complex integrations in a multi-vendor environment, it must do more on the integration of its own growing product portfolio, not to mention be more robust at implementations in complex multi-vendor environments, especially in health informatics. Moreover, without more seamless integration, it also risks losing out in the race to win new clinical and diagnostic analytics business. Neither of these improvements will occur overnight and must be undertaken in a constantly evolving marketplace, increasingly under siege from new competitors and evolving business models.
So, while Philips looks to have the edge out of “the big four” today, the fate of each of them lies both in their ability to adapt to a healthcare market undergoing rapid change, while planning and positioning themselves for a long-term future of digitalised, artificial intelligence fuelled, precision medicine.
This will be no easy undertaking.
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