Medtech Winners of 2015: Collaboration

There is growing recognition among medtech players that simply selling widgets to a hospital is akin to signing up for irrelevancy in the new healthcare paradigm. Collaboration is the order of the day.

Medtronic is working with IBM Watson Health to crunch data from insulin pumps in a bid to make diabetes management easier. Edwards Lifesciences announced an agreement with BD’s CareFusion, whereby Edwards’ hemodynamic monitoring systems will work alongside CareFusion’s Alaris infusion pump to ensure surgery patients have enough fluids, automating a process that has in the past required guesswork.

There are also product collaborations. Dexcom is partnering with Google Life Sciences to use the tech company’s miniaturized electronics platform to build smaller, cheaper, disposable continuous glucose monitoring sensors.

“The increasing number and complexity of collaborations reflect the broader trend in the medtech industry of shifts towards more holistic solutions (and often the need for companies to “gap-fill” elements of those solutions),” said Jonas Funk, managing director and partner at L.E.K. Consulting.