After working as a physician in France and Nepal, Philippe joined Médecins Sans Frontières where he gained extensive experience of working in the field and as a researcher working on malaria and tuberculosis. He spent six years as the Scientific Director of Epicentre in Paris, a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Research in Epidemiology and Response to Emerging Diseases. Prior to this, he spent three years as a senior advisor at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Philippe is Director of the Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO), which collates and pools clinical, laboratory and epidemiological data on select poverty-related diseases and emerging infections. IDDO is building upon the success of the WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN), a scientifically independent, multi-disciplinary platform, founded in 2009 to provide the information necessary to prevent or alleviate antimalarial drug resistance and therefore reduce malaria morbidity and mortality.