Mid-2018 Wound Care Buzz Report

Welcome to another edition of the FloodGate Buzz Report.  In this blog, we are going to highlight the most newsworthy events from the first half of the year to make sure you are completely up to speed on everything in the Tissue and Advanced Wound Care space.  

  1. Acelity acquires Crawford Healthcare: In speaking with several high level executives over at Acelity this week, (which is rumored to rebranding itself back to KCI), it is clear that the commercial team has a great deal of enthusiasm around the acquisition of Crawford Healthcare and sees this move as a great way to more deeply penetrate the acute care vertical with high end products like Promogran, Silvercel and Actisorb.  (Source)
  2. Alliqua sells assets to Cellularity: Despite the significant progress they made in the building of a very talented commercial team and the launch of MIST Therapy, Biovance and Interfyl, the leadership team at Alliqua decided to sell these assets to Cellularity who is a leader in the placenta derived product space and focus their their energy on other strategic alternatives. Good luck to the Cellularity team with continuing to build on these brands in the wound care community.  (Source)
  3. Hollister divests it’s wound care business: It is clear that Hollister was not committed to being a major player in the wound space here in the US and they can now focus on fighting it out with Convatec and Coloplast for the Ostomy and Continence market share.   (Source 1) (Source 2) (Source 3)
  4. Molnlycke acquires German Wound Care Company SastoMed: It will be interesting to see if Molyncke can re-find it’s identity in the next few years. For a company that was one of the clear front runners to be the most dynamic wound care company in the US just a few years ago, it kinda feels like they’ve taken their eye off the ball with all the changes at the top of the organization. Rafael Mazuz wrote a really insightful article on why this acquisition of Sastomed is so significant for Molnlycke. You can find this article here.   (Source)
  5. Mimedx top brass resign and lands on cover of WSJ: I am not sure what to make of this one, but it doesn’t look good for those folks down in Marietta  (Source 1) (Source 2)
  6. Wound Care Education Institute acquired: In speaking with Nancy Morgan, the Founder of the wound care industry’s largest and most recognized clinical wound care training company, she was thrilled to report that “the transition was going extremely well and that the organization is doing great under new ownership.  (Source)
  7. Wound Care Market now expected to reach a staggering $18B by 2025: In speaking with Jeremy Bowden this week, who heads up the SAWC conferences for HMP, it is clear that the this product vertical continues to grows and shows no signs of slowing. What was once a sleepy little sector has blossomed into a very big part of the healthcare economy  (Source 1) (Source 2)
  8. Urgo Medical acquires… : We can’t release the name of the company, but we recently heard from a reliable source that Urgo just made a pretty significant acquisition of a company in the AWC space. If this goes through, we will report on it in our next buzz report.
  9. Sanuwave receives FDA approval to market Dermapace: This is an inspiring story for other startups who’ve worked hard and been patiently persistent.  After 14 years of product development, innovation and pre-commercial planning, SANUWAVE can finally and officially market their Class 2 medical device system for the treatment of Diabetic Foot Ulcers (DFU). In speaking with Shri Parikh this week, who is the new President for SANUWAVE, it is clear that the company is moving as quickly as possible to get dermaPACE in the hands of the caregivers so they can start healing the many DFU patients who are suffering from diabetes-related challenges and in desperate need of dermaPACE treatment.  (Source)
  10. FloodGate partners with Healiant Inc and finally…#10  We here at FloodGate, are excited about this new partnership with Healiant.  Healiant is similar to Uber and others in the on-demand economy in the way they leverage cutting edge technology to solve the full time, part time and per diem clinical staffing and sales support problems that have plagued health care providers and industry partners in the wound and tissue space for decades.  For more information on this killer technology, please visit Healiant.com.

Well, that does it!  Remember to check back next month to catch up on everything you missed in the wearable med tech space over the last few months.  We’d love to hear from you in the comments below and make sure to check out more blog posts here and of course, make sure to follow all of us on LinkedIn.