Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) intends to use health IT solutions to broaden the company’s historic focus from being a primarily therapy-oriented company and find ways to generate more revenue from existing patients using the company’s medical devices, CEO Omar Ishrak said.
Those technologies can also help crack open new global markets where the company has to contend with access and infrastructure issues, he said in an interview with MedCity News last week. Ishrak also believes that given the “highly mobile” world that Medtronic plays in and the increasing efficiencies that come from health IT, it would be “stupid, if nothing else” not to leverage them.
So will there come a day when every major Medtronic product comes with its own mobile app? Ishrak said “we should,” but wasn’t going to commit to a sweeping comment on all apps.
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
“What I will state is that the way in which people work today, the way in which people get information today and they use information today is rapidly changing,” he said. “It’s highly mobile, it provides high degrees of efficiencies and raises the profile of capability. (When we talk about) global penetration, access and infrastructure problems, I think that these types of technologies will be critical assets in our ability to handle, overcome those challenges.”
Ishrak signaled that the company is also looking for ways to leverage the information gathered from Medtronic’s remote monitoring technologies that are connected to implanted devices within a patient.
“I do think that so far we have really looked at ourselves as a therapy type of company where our products have been therapy oriented,” he said. “I really think we have to go broader than just the therapy itself and think of ways to get recurring revenue from people with our implants and we have a variety of ways to do that. To the extent that IT fits into that, it will be certainly in the mix of our thinking.”
That’s where the company’s CareLink Network will come into play through which gleans information about a patient’s physical health is gathered remotely from electronic devices implanted within them.
Health Benefit Consultants, Share Your Expert Insights in Our Survey
Share some of the trends you are seeing among your clients across healthcare, including chronic conditions, behavioral health, healthcare navigation, and more.
“Using that information in the right way to lower overall cost of care, improve overall cost of care is a pretty big opportunity. We have begun to look at that, and if we look at IT, that’s probably the way to proceed.”
The CareLink Network, which is Internet-based and meant to help physicians and patients manage their chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, also has a mobile app component. In June, the company launched its first mobile app that would work with cardiac implanted devices. The free app allows physicians who are authorized to use the company’s remote monitoring CareLink Network to get the same information on their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.
But that was just one aspect of the company’s health IT efforts.
- In May it announced a partnership with Ford for an in-car diabetes management system.
- In April it said its apps had been downloaded more than 10,000 times.
- The latest version of its consumer app, Carb Counting With Lenny, has been available for more than a year.
- And it has a team of developers building internal apps for its own employees.
Under former CEO Bill Hawkins the company deployed 4,500 iPads to its staff. Ishrak, meanwhile, unveiled his own Twitter accounts – @medtronicCEO – with (so far) limited results.
“You can’t avoid but take social media as a serious form of communication,” Ishrak said. “For it to be just a substitute for advertising is probably a poor way to use it. I think the key to social media is to find ways to build on a two-way relationship. I think that’s tough to do. I don’t think we have the answer. It’s not something that CEOs can do very easily. But I am interested and I am looking at ways of doing this in a pragmatic way and effective way, where it adds real value.”
Read from the interview with Omar Ishrak:
