Santa Ana-based Abbott Medical Optics has a pipeline ready to deliver a steady stream of new products that the eye specialist is counting on for a boost in the second half of the year.
The unit of Chicago-based diversified medial device maker Abbott Laboratories is set to introduce seven products by the end of 2015.
“We’ve put significant emphasis on technology development,” Leonard Borrmann, Abbott Medical divisional vice president for research and development, said during a recent visit to the company’s corporate office on St. Andrew’s Place near the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway.
Abbott Medical showcased a pair of its newest products at last month’s American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery meeting in San Diego.
Its Tecnis iTec Preloaded device allows a surgeon to insert a Tecnis intraocular replacement lens into the eye without having to touch or load the lens, lessening the risk of contamination-associated infection.
The unit also introduced Compact Intuitiv, a device used in phacoemulsification procedures for cataract surgery.
Abbott received Food and Drug Administration approval a few weeks ago for iDesign, which is a device used by eye surgeons for diagnostic purposes prior to laser vision correction surgery, or Lasik. The company will fully introduce iDesign next month.
“The results are excellent,” Borrmann said of how iDesign performed in a large multisite clinical trial prior to its approval.
Abbott Medical executives said their new products—the four others are two new versions of its Tecnis Multifocal intraocular lens and one product coming this year in laser cataract surgery and another intraocular lens—are helping to drive a change in how eye surgeons go about their business.
“Ophthalmology is really undergoing a revolution,” said Dr. David Tanzer, Abbott Medical’s divisional vice president for medical affairs and chief medical officer.
Tanzer described a recent shift in the landscape as a merger of cataract and refractive surgical disciplines.
Cataract surgeons remove the eye’s natural lens after it turns cloudy and replace it with artificial lenses. Refractive surgeons correct and improve vision by using lasers, something that reduces or eliminates dependence on contacts or glasses.
“A modern surgeon really can benefit their patients the most by being a refractive cataract surgeon, which brings together the best of refractive surgery and the best of cataract surgery,” Tanzer said.
Time Frame
Each product in this year’s lineup has been roughly three to five years in the making.
“We get the products to market as quickly as possible,” Borrmann said, adding that Abbott Medical has to make sure it meets regulatory agencies’ requirements.
“So none of these things happen immediately or quickly, but they’re through a concerted effort of developing a product, demonstrating that it works in a laboratory environment, and lastly, generating human clinical data that supports both the regulatory need and the market need,” Borrmann said.
Executives of parent Abbott Laboratories are counting on the new Abbott Medical entries to bring it back from a mild hiccup. The Santa Ana-based unit’s first-quarter sales came in at $261 million, down 3.4% from 2014’s first quarter.
“While this performance was below our expectations, we expect to improve sales growth in our medical optics business over the rest of the year as we launch new products,” Brian Yoor, Abbott’s vice president for investor relations, said in a conference call with analysts and investors last month.
“In medical optics, sales were impacted by market dynamics in our cataract and Lasik business,” Abbott Laboratories Chief Executive Miles White said on the call.
White also noted that the results reflected an unfavorable 7.1% effect of foreign exchange.
White later in the call described Abbott Medical as “kind of two stories” and mentioned some factors that have affected the cataract and laser businesses.
“We are seeing some customer consolidation in the Lasik market,” he said. “We are seeing lower utilization in the Lasik market. We have been seeing that for a number of years now.”
The declines have been offset to some degree by growing demand for devices used in treatment of cataracts, a growth market given the large numbers of aging baby boomers in the U.S. and elsewhere.
“Cataract business for me is strong,” he said. “We have got a great drumbeat here of innovation coming steadily, our R&D groups have done a fabulous job I think over the last several years, and they continue [to be committed to] constant product innovation and launch.”
Abbott Medical started to see a pickup in its cataract surgery business as the quarter progressed, White said.
