Wearables push as Covid testing fades

Abbott Laboratories CEO Robert Ford took the stage on the HLTH conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday to debate the corporate’s expansion right into a latest market: consumer wearables. 

The health-care company offers a spread of products but derives the majority of its revenue from medical devices and diagnostic tools. Its 15-minute rapid Covid test was a boon for the corporate, bringing in a staggering $7.7 billion in sales in 2021 and $8.4 billion the next yr, a large portion of its total 2022 sales of $43.7 billion.

But because the pandemic has slowed so has testing. During its second quarter, Abbott reported $263 million in Covid test sales, an enormous drop from the $2.3 billion it reported in the course of the year-earlier period.  

Abbott knew Covid-testing rates would eventually decline, so Ford said he wanted to make sure the corporate continued investing in research and development for its other offerings, like its medical devices. 

For example, Abbott produces a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) called FreeStyle Libre that patients can use to administer their diabetes. The device is a small circular sensor that’s applied to a patient’s upper arm, meting out with the necessity for finger pricks that glucometers require. Abbott’s most up-to-date model, the FreeStyle Libre 3, can measure glucose levels in real time for as much as 14 days. 

Margaret Kaczor Andrew, a partner and research analyst at William Blair, told CNBC’s Erin Black in May that Abbott has around two-thirds of the worldwide CGM market. FreeStyle Libre alone generated greater than $1.3 billion in sales for Abbott during its second quarter, in line with the corporate’s earnings report. 

The device has also attracted a surprising latest demographic. Ford said people without diabetes have expressed interest in using FreeStyle Libre as a option to find out about how their bodies react to food and other each day activities. 

This set the stage for Abbott to try to capture a latest marketplace for wearables. 

“We all the time believed that we could take this platform that we developed for diabetes and expand it beyond diabetes,” Ford said. 

“There is a much larger population on the planet that is definitely healthy,” Ford added. “We’ll proceed to resolve medical problems, but I believe we also need to have a look at the healthy that wish to stay healthy, and develop products and solutions and services for them.”

In January 2022, Abbott announced a latest wearable sensor called Lingo that is currently available within the U.K, and Ford said he hopes the device will come out within the U.S. next yr. The device tracks glucose levels and pairs with an app where consumers can access a personalised coaching algorithm that gives recommendations around food plan, sleep and exercise.

Abbott believes Lingo will help people higher understand their metabolism, and ultimately make healthier decisions. 

Since Lingo was first announced, Ford said, Abbott has been excited about the way to present the info to consumers in a way that’s each easy and actionable. He said he wants people to have the option to benefit from the newest technology without feeling intimidated or that they need a medical degree to get essentially the most out of it. 

But for an organization that is spent the last 135 years working closely with doctors, researchers and other health-care experts, easy messaging generally is a challenge. 

“How can we get out of our own way?” Ford said. “Are you able to imagine your grandmother understanding that or your uncle understanding that? No, you do not. So we’ve to vary our way of how we talk.” 

Ford added that for the reason that company is exploring a latest market, there might be kinks to work out. He said Abbott could have to guage the efficacy of its marketing, whether it will probably keep consumers engaged and whether it’s targeting the best audience, amongst other things. 

Ford is well acquainted with the challenges around ease of use.  

Before serving as CEO, Ford worked as chief operating officer and as executive vp of medical devices at Abbott. In 2008, he helped launch the corporate’s first CGM called FreeStyle Navigator, which was expensive, bulky and hard for patients to make use of. FreeStyle Navigator was discontinued, and Ford was sent back to the drafting board. 

He said the experience forced him to learn to raised communicate with consumers, which has helped inform his approach at Abbott going forward. 

This time around, Ford said he wants consumers to know that Abbott understands the unique technological moment that the health-care industry is in — that it’s now easier than ever for people to access data about their very own health.  

“We get that there is a revolution ongoing at once between health care and tech, and whether it’s AI, whether it’s connectivity, whether it is the motion of various hardware devices, whether it’s phones, tablets, glasses, etc., we get that, we are able to see that.” he said.

Abbott is planning to submit its Lingo filing to the Food and Drug Administration by the tip of this yr.