BREEDING BRIGHT IDEAS

It’s been a long and often difficult process but out of the 438 ideas submitted to the Philips Plus project since February, Royal Philips Electronics (Thailand) has finally found its winners in the three categories up for grabs - Access to Healthcare, Liveable Cities and Healthy Living.

The winning ideas will become real-life Philips-led projects with Bt2 million in funding apiece and will be implemented by working together with the public and relevant stakeholders to tackle concrete health and well-being issues faced by people in Thailand. The winners themselves receive Bt70,000 in Phillips goods.

The Liveable Cities prize goes to the senior supervisor of the Teledirect Telecommerce Company Apichart Phaeprasert, and was generated by his habit of jogging.

“What with traffic jams as well as the hectic pace of the big city, sometimes it’s impossible to jog in the morning or late afternoon. It would be great if we had a place like the parks where we could run at night. For that, we need a safe place with enough lighting and it would be better is that the lighting is energy efficient, say from a solar system. My dream is that the park should be as bright as a 7-Eleven shop,” says the 50-year-old.

The idea can be turned into reality faster than any of the other projects for the simple reason that Philips has its own solar LED lights, thus allowing installation to reduce reliance on traditional electricity sources.

Sasakorn Liewsangan, a 21-year-old student at Mahidol University’s ICT faculty who is majoring in Health Information Technology won Healthy Living with her idea to integrate both health and technology through an application that could alert people of potential health issues.

“People around me sit at the computer at least eight hours, and they tend to neglect to take care of their health. Most people use smart phones these days so I’d like to see an app that reminds us about health care, of doctor’s appointments as well as taking medicines,” she says.

The Philips project team will design the application contents, which will tell us when to take a break from our computers, remind us to see a doctor and even tell us when we should exercise.

A researcher with PTT, 35-year-old Kun Kangvansaischol identified the need for a mobile service, which gathers basic health check information like blood pressure and blood sugar for seniors.

“Thais don’t have annual check-ups. As the country is now facing a greying population, it would be good if we had something like a mobile health screening service for senior citizens who have poor access to healthcare,” he says.

Philips’ chairman and managing director Viroj Vithayaveroj says that the company is organising teams to realise the ideas and aims to complete every project in early October.

Thailand was the second country after Indonesia to run the competition. Philips Plus is now being launched in Singapore, Australia and Russia. It is also undergoing an evaluation and if considered successful, Philips will expand the project to other countries beyond Asia Pacific.