Several Chinese concerns are interested in J&J’s diabetes unit:
I can’t say I would be thrilled. I tried three times, in the 2000s, to start an R&D lab in China. Every time I failed because we were not able to deal with a corporate culture where quality control is hard to enforce.
To me this looks like a big Meh.
J&J is essentially out of the insulin delivery market, and the Lifescan meters are just another meter at this point.
The lack of profits J&J has seen in their diabetes lines is what has prompted their desire to divest. I don’t think they had any plan to dump more money into research, so their products were essentially dead anyway.
Agree with you, additionally, as soon as you manufacture there you will have knock offs almost immediately. They even knocked off our pacemakers, but their patients kept having problems…
Medtronic tried to start a manufacturing line in China, but it never was able to pass the quality control tests.
One of the potential suitors is none other than Sinocare, who also purchased Nipro Diagnostics several years ago. The Nipro purchase, (thereafter named Trividia Health aka True Metrix) pushed them into the #6 spot for BG meter manufacturers. The playing field keeps getting smaller…
It’s interesting that there’s so little money to be made in the diabetes market (lack of profits caused them to divest). I would think that there’s a growing market, especially if you take T2 into consideration. (Just an un-researched thought).
And thanks @Chris and @Michel for sharing. Very interesting about the Chinese business experiences. Not surprised to hear about the less functional knockoffs. I can’t imagine choosing a product that’s untrustworthy and having it installed internally. Sad for those folks affected by the knockoffs.
Yup. Maybe I am over-generalizing here but I do not see a lot of innovation and R&D coming out of the big companies.
It seems to me that innovation is only done by start-ups funded with venture capital, and then the big companies buy the ones that will be successful.
Too bad about the Animas pump product line though.