If Fierce Medtech’s most-read stories of 2022 illustrated the industry’s return to some semblance of post-COVID normalcy, then 2023’s picks showed how many are realigning themselves to meet the harsh new realities that came with it.
Layoffs, spinoffs, bankruptcies—and, in one case, jail time—together set the themes for our top 10 list.
Our most-read story focused on a stepping stone in Elizabeth Holmes’ journey to federal prison this year after she was convicted of committing fraud during her time as Theranos’ CEO. A quick court hearing in March ended up delaying a final ruling on when Holmes would have to begin serving her sentence of more than 11 years—as well as how much money she would have to pay back to the company’s investors. Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Theranos’ former COO and president, together were ultimately fined a total of $452,047,268 in restitution.
Next came news in April that Medtronic would begin moving forward with layoffs spanning its international businesses—a task so large that, with about 100,000 employees worldwide, the company said the process of notifying employees whether or not they still had a job could take weeks to months, with the total number of cuts undisclosed at the time. By August, the medtech giant reported more than $350 million in restructuring charges related to termination benefits, alongside across-the-board gains in revenues for $7.7 billion in quarterly sales.
Up third is a report that Apple may be getting closer to its long-held goal of delivering a wrist-worn sensor for blood sugar tracking that would be built into its Apple Watch. Rumor has it that the company reached the proof-of-concept stage by late February with a device that could allow wearers with diabetes to monitor their glucose levels without drawing blood. However, the Apple Watch hit a speed bump at the end of this year, after a pulse oximeter patent dispute with Masimo led to the company hitting pause on its U.S. smartwatch sales just before the Christmas holiday.
Layoffs at Johnson & Johnson MedTech took the fourth spot, affecting more than 350 employees at locations in Silicon Valley. The news came just weeks after reports that J&J was planning a restructuring of its infectious disease and vaccine groups, as well as a separate wave of cuts at the company’s consumer health group ahead of a planned spinoff.
Stories number five and seven on the list belong to the company formerly known as PerkinElmer, which completed a $2.45 billion spinout amid a corporate-branding game of musical chairs. Now, stick with me here: The March deal handed off its applied science, food and enterprise services divisions to buyer New Mountain Capital, and with them, the PerkinElmer name. The remaining (original) company, with its life sciences and diagnostics supply businesses, unveiled its chosen name, Revvity, nearly two months later, along with a new corporate hue of yellow. But now, PerkinElmer—that’s the new PerkinElmer—is back in the game: In December, New Mountain Capital had it take over its Covaris instruments, consumables and sample prep catalog, to, yes, once again support life sciences and diagnostic research.
Sitting between those two, in the sixth spot, is the return of Owlet’s connected, baby-monitoring sock. The company pulled it from the market nearly two years prior, after the FDA warned them they were selling an unregulated medical device, thanks to the sock’s sensors for measuring heart rate and blood oxygen level. In June, the company made good: Owlet obtained an agency clearance for a new version of the prescription parental alert system, now dubbed BabySat.
Our eighth most-read story detailed the final result of Pear Therapeutics’ bankruptcy, as the therapeutic software developer’s assets were split up between four bidders, collecting just $6 million at auction. The company, a former Fierce 15 winner, had gone public in 2021 through a $1.6 billion SPAC deal after raising more than $400 million in lifetime venture capital and breaking ground as its substance use disorder program received the FDA’s first-ever digital therapeutic clearance. But after waves of layoffs, CEO Corey McCann took to LinkedIn earlier this year with a eulogy: “We’ve shown that our products can improve clinical outcomes. We’ve shown that our products can save payors money. Most importantly, we’ve shown that our products can truly help patients and their clinicians,” he wrote. “But that isn’t enough. Payors have the ability to deny payment for therapies that are clinically necessary, effective, and cost-saving. In addition, market conditions over the last two years have challenged many growth-stage companies, including us.”
Our ninth story marked a grim milestone in Philips’ ongoing, years-long recall of millions of CPAP machines and home ventilators. An updated tally from the FDA published in February reported the agency had received more than 98,000 medical device reports related to the disintegration of the machines’ sound-insulating foam—including 82 reports of death received during the two final months of 2022, which pushed the total at the time to 346. Since then, Philips has said it is more than 99% finished with its repair-and-replace efforts, but new issues keep cropping up. The company reported in late November complaints of some of its CPAP machines overheating.
Finally, rounding out the top 10 stories of 2023, Baxter joined the slate of medtech companies this year looking to spin out specialized divisions and start fresh. In January, the company outlined its plans to launch its $5 billion kidney care and dialysis division as an independent outfit. The name Vantive was announced some seven months later, and Baxter has said it aims to finalize the split by July 2024. Elsewhere in the industry, Medtronic had announced it would hive off its own kidney care business and form a joint venture with DaVita named Mozarc Medical. Medtronic also said it would let go of its patient monitoring and respiratory care segments and has been shopping them around to potential buyers. Meanwhile, GE HealthCare left the mothership, BD launched its diabetes spinout Embecta, and 3M is setting up its standalone healthcare business as Solventum.
This year Fierce Medtech also kicked off the second decade of its annual Fierce 15 honors—including, among other worthy winners, companies like MindMics and Anumana that are turning heart monitoring tech on its head; Ultima Genomics, promising $100 genomes with Nvidia-powered sequencing; and Synchron, the brain-computing interface developer giving Elon Musk a run for his money.
Who will make our Fierce 15 list for 2023? Submissions are open now through January, as we hunt for the fiercest, most innovative private medtech companies and startups from around the globe and in every healthcare area. Thank you, as always, for sharing your stories with us.