Author: Sharon Mutuc

Manila – AC Health was hailed as the Grand Winner of the Service Excellence Company of the Year Award for their contributions in healthcare, at the recently concluded 12th Asia CEO Awards, the largest business awards event in the Philippines and one of the largest business award events in the Asia Pacific region.

The online event, held last October 12, was attended by local and international business leaders who have advocated for progress and innovation in their respective sectors despite the pandemic. AC Health was chosen as the winner among 28 other companies in the Service Excellence Company of the Year category for their continued commitment to improve access to healthcare as evidenced by the group’s COVID-19 response initiatives.

AC Health President and CEO Paolo Borromeo highlights the company’s vision in providing quality healthcare to Filipinos in his speech, stating, “It has been a challenging year but we remain committed to investing in healthcare. Throughout the crisis, we have leveraged the entire AC Health network to lead the group’s COVID-19 response initiatives through spearheading and implementing key milestones to address gaps in the healthcare system. We hope to continue this momentum and strive to deliver better care to all Filipinos.” He also dedicates the award to AC Health’s frontliners and healthcare workers who have tirelessly served during the pandemic.

To date, AC Health, together with Healthway, QualiMed and HealthNow, has set up mega-isolation facilities, COVID-19 testing labs, and has administered over 500,000 COVID-19 doses across 25 vaccination sites in key cities.

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For more information, contact:

CHACHI MORENO, M.D.

Strategy and External Affairs Manager

Zodiac Health Ventures, Inc E-mail: moreno.fmm@achealth.com.ph

MANILA – Ayala Corporation Chairman Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala is keen to continue exchanging ideas and investing resources with Japanese firms to accelerate a strong and sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic through innovation and digitalization.    

At the 38th Joint Meeting of the Philippines-Japan Economic Cooperation Committees held Monday, Zobel shared thoughts alongside DTI Secretary Ramon Lopez and Japanese business leaders Ken Kobayashi of Mitsubishi Corporation, Teruo Asada of Marubeni Corporation, and Nobuhide Hayashi of Mizuho Bank, Ltd.    

“The Philippines and Japan have always maintained a strong economic partnership even during this pandemic,” Lopez said. “In this partnership, innovation and digitalization now play a key role—as both our countries continue to encourage globally competitive and innovative industries at this crucial stage of recovery.”    

“Japan has been the largest foreign investor in the Philippines for the last two decades, with more than 1,400 Japanese companies presently operating in the country,” Kobayashi said. “I’m grateful for this strong and growing relationships between our two nations that will bring economic growth for both.”   

During his speech, Zobel cited the Ayala group’s long-standing strategic partnerships with Japanese firms, notably Mitsubishi Corporation since 1974; and highlighted three key areas of outsized potential for co-investment between Japanese and Philippine firms to drive recovery and growth in the new normal. “We often look to Japan, with its history and leadership in innovation, as a source of inspiration for the forward-thinking and novel ways in which technologies can be applied to address pain points and create value for business and society alike,” Zobel noted.    

Access to Healthcare   

First in Zobel’s list is healthcare, a traditionally underserved market in the Philippines, which has been most critical during the pandemic.

“Globally, the pandemic has exposed woeful inadequacies in healthcare infrastructure,” Zobel said. “Our experience with HealthNow–Ayala Group’s all-in-one healthcare platform—and COVID illustrates the need for systematic investment in innovation and digitalization to address challenges faced by our healthcare system.”      

According to Zobel, while the Philippines produces the best healthcare workers in the world, the country’s physical and digital healthcare infrastructure requires substantial stimulus, which can be provided by a collaborative effort between the private and public sectors.    

 Financial Inclusion    

Another opportunity for PH-Japan collaboration is financial inclusion. As both BPI Mobile Banking and GCash generated record-high transactions during the pandemic, Zobel invites Japanese firms to look at these channels, citing Paypal’s $2.7B deal with Paidy.

“Considering Paidy’s ‘buy now, pay later’ model, there are many analogues that we can possibly borrow from this— perhaps on exploring ways around how we might adapt learnings from Japan to the needs of our own young market that has a sub-10% credit card penetration rate,” he said. 

“We have much to learn from the approaches and models of our Japanese counterparts, and we hope that further success stories might arise from continued cooperation to transform this space,” he added.        

During the pandemic, BPI saw its transactions swing to digital. With 92% of transactions now done online, the platform recorded over 4 million digital enrollments, with over 2.5 million digitally active users. Meanwhile, GCash has experienced over 280% growth in daily active transactions year-on-year, and nearly +1,000% growth from pre-pandemic levels. The GCash App now has 46 million downloads.  

Green Energy Shift  

Finally, Zobel echoed the global call for a shift to green energy development, which the Ayala Group is addressing through AC Energy.   

With Japan being recognized for designing and building infrastructure resilient to natural disasters, Zobel said the Philippines can borrow technologies and practices from Japan to build a more resilient and adaptive grid.   

Zobel also touched on Japan’s pioneering efforts in the liquefied hydrogen space, which has tremendous implications for accelerating green energy transitions in the automotive space, and for the scalability of clean energy generation and storage vis-à-vis fuel cell technology.       

“Japan is certainly well on its way with its Green Growth Strategy by investing in these technologies, with hopes to achieve 40% of its national mix generated by renewable sources by 2030. There is much we can continue to learn from Japanese leadership in this field— disaster-resilient energy infrastructure and cutting-edge carbon-free fuels being just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.     

AC Energy aims to be the largest listed renewable platform in Southeast Asia, with a goal of producing 5GW of attributable renewable capacity by 2025.    

According to Zobel, Ayala’s longstanding partnership with Mitsubishi Corporation—which has supported Ayala at the holding company level as well as in Manila Water, AC Energy, and Ayala Land—is a testament on how Philippine firms can work with Japanese firms to scale up and innovate.    

“I believe there is much room for further cooperation and investment in innovation and digitalization between the Philippines and Japan,” he said.   “Combining our resources and experiences will surely yield innovative ways of addressing the challenges posed by a more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world that demands more digital and inclusive means of serving our stakeholders,” he added.    

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For more information, contact:

YLA ALCANTARA
Head, Brand and Reputation Management
Ayala Corporation
E-mail – alcantara.ypg@ayala.com

On March 19, the QualiMed Health Network shared its progress of vaccinating over 1,400 of its healthcare worker population. The QualiMed Health Network, with hospitals in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan, Tanauan, Batangas, and Iloilo City, Iloilo, are among the first to receive the doses of AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines from the DOH-IATF, in collaboration with respective local government units.

“The QualiMed team is extremely grateful to the DOH and IATF for providing vaccine doses for our frontline healthcare workers. This week, nearly 90% of our team have reported that they are willing to be vaccinated which is encouraging not only for us, but also for other Filipinos. As we continue to ramp up our vaccination program, we also hope to address vaccine hesitancy in the country and emphasize its crucial role in providing safer and more reliable healthcare to our patients,” said Jimmy Ysmael, President and CEO of the QualiMed Health Network.

“The AC Health network renews its commitment to support the government in the fight against the pandemic. With the surge of COVID cases, we are gearing up our testing sites, facilities, and digital platforms to continue providing accessible healthcare to Filipinos. Moving forward, we are preparing to contribute to the country’s vaccination efforts as we gear up for large-scale administration. We have identified and are setting up nearly 20 mega-sites nationwide with a goal to administer 1,000,000 doses by 2021,” said Paolo Borromeo, President and CEO of AC Health.

Recently, the Ayala Group, led by Ayala Healthcare Holdings, Inc (AC Health), has collaborated with ICTSI and Moderna to reach a supply deal for 13 million vaccine doses for the Philippines.  The group aims to launch its COVID vaccination program for employees and partners in June, pending the delivery of procured vaccines from manufacturers and the allocation of vaccines by the national government.

AC Health also continues to respond to the recent COVID surge by leveraging its network that has established testing sites, COVID-19 referral hospitals, and digital platforms over the past year.

Last November, AC Health expanded QualiMed Hospital – Sta. Rosa’s COVID-dedicated bed capacity to 75 beds, and QualiMed Hospital – San Jose Del Monte’s to 30 beds, effectively doubling the total bed capacity for COVID patients since the facilities were initially upgraded last year. Healthway’s Family and Multi-Specialty clinics also remained open to serve as extended frontline care. Since the beginning of the pandemic, AC Health’s network of QualiMed hospitals and Healthway clinics has triaged over 500,000 patients.

On testing sites, the Ayala Group, led by AC Health, engaged with private sector partners to build 4 Biosafety Level 2 modular laboratories in QualiMed hospitals across the country. This consortium was formed as part of the Ayala Group’s initiative to contribute an additional capacity of 5,500 confirmatory RT-PCR tests per day in support of the Department of Health’s and the Inter-agency Task Force’s Project T3 (Test, Trace, Treat). As of today, the laboratories have already conducted over 150,000 tests.

AC Health’s Vigos Ventures and Globe’s 917Ventures, also launched HealthNow, an all-in-one healthcare app that offers telemedicine consultations, online medicine ordering and delivery, and clinic and diagnostic testing booking. To date, HealthNow has recorded over 160,000 app installs and more than 400 onboarded doctors.

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AC Health

Ayala Healthcare Holdings, Inc. (AC Health) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Ayala Corporation, and serves as the portfolio company for healthcare businesses. Its vision is to build an ecosystem that links every patient to a seamless healthcare experience. Its portfolio includes Generika Drugstore, the pioneer in generic retail pharmacies, IE Medica and MedEthix, major pharmaceutical importer and distributor, Healthway, the country’s largest network of primary care, multi-specialty, and corporate clinics, and QualiMed, a comprehensive network of full-service hospitals, multi-specialty clinics, and stand-alone day surgery centers. AC Health is also investing in health technology solutions, such as its HealthTech arm, Vigos Health Technologies, HealthNow, a healthcare aggregator app that offers online consultations, medicine delivery, and clinic and diagnostic booking, AIDE, a home health care platform, Fibronostics, an algorithm-based health-risk assessment tool, and ObvioHealth, a digital clinic trials platform.

For further inquiries, contact:

Janelle Panganiban

Strategy and External Affairs Specialist

Contact: 0917-836-3077

E-mail: panganiban.jms@achealth.com.ph