Medtronic is buying Physio-Control International, the leading maker of external defibrillators for hospital and out-of hospital applications. The big attraction for Medtronic is Physio-Control's automatic external defibrillators, which are simple-to-use external defibrillators, designed to allow minimally trained or untrained peole to provide quick help to victims of sudden cardiac death. Medtronic wants to increase the extremely low survival rate of SCD victims because they can then become candidates for Medtronic's implantable defibrillators. Physio Control on the other hand, while the market leader in this field, needs Medtronic's resources and access to cardiologists in order to quicken the pace of the market development in this field. Moreover, Physio-Control, while successful, is a narrowly focused company, which has made its stock more volatile than is warranted.
First, Hewlett-Packard Co. in
December, bought Heartstream Inc. , the
medical device start-up which more than any other company brought
attention to the concept of public access defibrillation
[See Deal], the leading maker of external defibrillators for
hospital and non-hospital applications. Heartstream and
Physio-Control have the lion’s share of the emerging market
for automatic external defibrillators (AEDs), which are
simple-to-use external defibrillators, designed to allow minimally
trained or untrained people to provide quick help to people in
sudden cardiac deaths (SCD).
AEDs are clearly getting the attention of major companies and demand for them therefore is likely to develop more rapidly than anyone could have predicted a year ago. With the...
