Dive Brief:
- Medtronic has extended its partnership with Mindray to bring patient monitoring technology to ambulatory surgery centers, the companies said last week.
- Under earlier agreements, Mindray integrated Medtronic patient monitoring technologies into its platforms to support physicians in perioperative settings and other acute care spaces.
- With some surgical procedures moving from hospitals to ASCs, the partners are integrating their technologies and adapting procurement processes to meet the needs of more sites of care.
Dive Insight:
Medtech companies have recognized ASCs as a growth opportunity. ASCs provide same-day surgical care. Eliminating the overnight stays associated with hospital inpatient procedures can be more convenient for patients and more cost-effective for healthcare providers. In 2024, ASCs received $7.5 billion for treating 3.4 million fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries.
Medtronic and Mindray have identified a set of providers with distinct patient monitoring and procurement requirements. The recognition has informed work to move the partnership beyond hospitals and into ASCs.
Mindray is integrating Medtronic technologies including Microstream capnography, BIS brain monitoring, Nellcor pulse oximetry and Invos regional oximetry into its platforms. The integrations are intended to make it easier for clinicians at ASCs to adopt monitoring technologies.
In addition to integrating their technologies, Medtronic and Mindray plan to strengthen clinical training and post-sales support and simplify purchasing processes. The partners will use their integrated distributor networks to make a more efficient and economical procurement process for Mindray monitoring systems featuring Medtronic technologies.
The new Mindray deal is part of Medtronic’s broader push into ASCs. On an earnings call in November, Medtronic CEO Geoff Martha said the company expects pulsed field ablation procedures to move from tertiary centers to ASCs over time. Seeing the shift as an incremental opportunity for market expansion, Medtronic has invested to capture the emerging ASC opportunity in PFA and other procedures.
“It is a focus for us,” Martha said. “We have been hiring across the company, quite frankly, particularly in neuroscience and in cardiovascular — folks that are specifically focused on market development in the ASCs for us and what our strategy is and how our product portfolio fits there and the resources we need, including mappers.”
Executives at Boston Scientific, Medtronic’s main rival for the PFA market, also recently discussed the shift to ASCs following a change in cardiac ablation reimbursement. Away from PFA, ASCs are a focus for companies including Intuitive Surgical, Johnson & Johnson and Zimmer Biomet.
