All essential products and services need to be founded on quality and timeliness, but none present a greater need for reliability and urgency than healthcare. Patient outcomes, and indeed lives, are at stake.
For decades, Air Liquide has been a major player in the healthcare sector, providing medical gases and related services to 20,000 hospitals and clinics in the world. In addition to the medical gases themselves, we address storage capacities and cylinder management in departments; piping required for bedside gases, and in operating rooms; and monitoring of all parameters related to medical gases thanks to digital solutions.
Today, the Group takes its commitment further, by being a partner of choice for the healthcare professionals working in hospitals and care facilities. This led Air Liquide to create “Always There”, a completely new value proposition to provide facilities with unparalleled medical gas supply reliability and seamless onsite gas management, in a sustainable way. At its heart: the ability to free up caregivers to allow them to focus their energy on advancing patient care.
The “Always There” value proposition is the result of a survey of more than 100 healthcare professionals, ranging from front-line doctors and nursing teams to technical experts, administrators and procurers. We drew respondents from across the sector, including emergency, surgical, intensive care and respiratory care units around the world.
“Always There” is founded on three pillars:
- Guaranteeing supply, to bring healthcare professionals peace of mind, by making medical gases available in times of calm and crisis, and by strengthening supply chains.
- Simplifying gas management, combining the best of technology, expertise and highly committed teams to deliver complete medical gas management, freeing hospital staff for patient care.
- Reducing carbon footprint, by providing medical gases produced from renewable sources while reducing waste.
Across our portfolio, we aim to simplify the management and use of gases by stepping up products and services for the benefit of caregivers and patient safety.
100
healthcare professionals surveyed to create the “Always There” value proposition
The Group provides hospitals with medical gases and advanced medical devices that are combined to treat respiratory failure, from intensive care units to patients’ beds. Beyond the therapy offer, Air Liquide provides dedicated services with training and 24/7 support for technical and clinical assistance. Dr Marcial Rey, Director of Anaesthesiology and Resuscitation at Hospital Povisa Vigo, Spain, explains: “The gas administration system provided by Air Liquide Healthcare eases the healthcare professionals to start the treatment. Another aspect is the support of Air Liquide teams in training healthcare professionals responsible for assembling the system, handling it and delivering of the treatment itself.”
In a sector that highly depends on reliability, Air Liquide is thus a trusted partner relying on a “rational use of technology and innovation to improve patient health and support professionals in implementing these improvements”.
Reducing the carbon emissions of hospitals
Sustainability being a key part of “Always There”, the Group also supports the healthcare sector in their objective to reduce their carbon footprint. For instance, in 2023, the Ikazia Hospital in Rotterdam (The Netherlands) chose liquid oxygen with the ECO ORIGIN™ solution supplied by Air Liquide Healthcare. This offer guarantees that the oxygen supplied was produced using 100% renewable energy. This helped reduce the carbon footprint for these gases by 86%(1).
Matthijs de Vroed, Sustainability Leader of the Ikazia Hospital, comments: “This reduction in our emissions means a reduction of 16,000 kg of CO2 annually. A great step towards reaching the objective of the Dutch Healthcare Green Deal that targets to reduce the carbon footprint of healthcare organizations in the country by 30% by 2026.”
