Few medtech companies have the visibility that businesses more connected to consumers have. The Johnson & Johnson name is ubiquitous on its pure medtech devices, not because of consumer staples like Q-tips, Band-Aids and Tylenol.
At the same time, the pandemic has pushed big names in the pharma world — Pfizer — absolutely unknown companies like Moderna — and lesser-known BioNtech — into mainstream consciousness because consumers must be aware To, and in most cases, to feel the sting in their lives – save the vaccine.
in Lake Forest, Illinois Abbott becoming easier to identify – it makes Covid-19 PCR and Rapid Antigen Test, the latter was touted by the previous White House host at a 2020 press conference long before a vaccine was available.It is against this highly visible backdrop that one must analyze Abbott Chairman and CEO Robert Ford’s appearance at Tuesday’s annual virtual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference and, perhaps more importantly, his CES keynote. speech [Consumer Electronics Show] last week.
In these interactions, Ford seeks to effectively erase the boundaries that traditional medical technology has in hospitals, nurses and doctors, and the boundaries of consumer technology in your heart, body and pocket. [Ford’s CES address itself was a first — no other healthcare company has ever been invited to deliver a keynote at this annual global gathering of consumer tech players and aficionados.]
It was at CES that Ford announced that Abbott was launching a whole new category of health technology — consumer bio-wearables called jargon. Why Spiritual Songs? Simply because these bio-wearables are designed to translate each person’s unique language into actionable data to help people track, monitor and measure general health. The sensor-driven technology is designed to track substances such as glucose, ketone bodies, and lactate in non-diabetic patients, and could be used to monitor alcohol levels in the future.
On the surface, this is nothing special. There are tons of health tech companies that use wearable sensors to detect many different things — sleep patterns, EKGs, breathing rates, oxygenation, and more. But importantly, a legacy medtech company familiar with developing medical-grade, clinically proven, compliant technology is betting on a future of convergence that can be widely used to achieve better health through: almost anyone.
That’s a topic Ford touched on when he was asked by JPMorgan Chase medical technology analyst Robbie Marcus about his presentation at CES in a one-on-one talk on Tuesday. A transcript of the conversation (slightly edited) provided by Seeking Alpha shows Ford’s response as follows:
I think that’s a nod to the kind of convergence I talked about in my keynote from the organizers of CES, that this convergence of digital technology and health technology has brought incredible things that are driving healthcare, changing healthcare, changing healthcare. Opportunity delivery, address cost.
You know in our device space, we’ve been working at least 4 or 5 years on this fusion and leveraging our technology and being able to look at consumer technology and how the two can be combined to provide a patient A more personalized experience, and even helps in terms of the cost of health systems and health system delivery.
We share our thoughts on the many things you know, where and how this will happen. Not everything is clearly defined. There are many more experiments that we see. But we’ve seen Abbott intend to lead this convergence, right?
Ford is referring to the fact that instead of just developing a quick test that can be done at home, Abbott is pairing it with an app through which more tests can be ordered and people can pass — assuming that is the ability to add the vaccination status of the app itself, so one app can have both test results and vaccine information.
Again, this is nothing new. iHealth Labs In Sunnyvale, California, its rapid antigen test kit and companion app did the same. But the “i” in the name underscores a consumer-focused corporate culture—one that wasn’t the starting point for traditional medtech companies like Abbott. But old dogs can learn new tricks, right? In fact, the Abbott name has undergone its own evolution to shed more of its medical roots. Formerly Abbott Laboratories became Abbott Labs, now just Abbott.Also take a look at the current home page Abbott, Medtronic, Dexcom, and Boston Scientific. It doesn’t make sense to guess which company has “Consumer” in their navigation and most other companies have “Patient”.
Abbott’s diabetes business brings it closer to consumers. Abbott’s Freestyle Libre products have been very successful for people with this chronic condition.This is the world’s first flash blood glucose monitoring system [though Abbott keeps calling it a CGM system — continuous glucose monitoring system — which it isn’t] This helps diabetics get on-demand blood sugar level readings when they hold the reader close to the wearable sensor.This product allows people to take their glucose readings while the sensor is being worn or even while on clothing – literally one second.
Ford says the company has been keen to “leverage the Libre platform in the diabetes space with an eye toward expanding it beyond diabetes.” So now with Lingo — which is only in the early stages of development — Ford expects Abbott to be in the A non-diabetic glucose, lactate and ketone sensor will be developed in the future. But don’t expect a makeover overnight.
“It’s going to take a little time here. It’s a completely different business model than diabetes,” Ford said. “It was more of a statement of intent, I would say, Abbott said, ‘Okay, we’re going to be the leader in this convergence.’ I know there are a lot of companies that think that way, but we definitely want to be the leader here. By……”
As a result, Abbott is working to become more prominent in the minds of consumers. What better time to do this than during a raging public health crisis, which for many is a life-or-death moment for their personal health. If hearts and bodies are won, maybe we’ll see another name sifting – this time iAbbott?
