Dive Brief:
- Medtronic, one of the largest medical technology companies in the world, is planning to sell all or part of its medical supplies business, sources familiar with the situation told Bloomberg.
- The prospective sale is still in the early stages, but prospective buyers have already been approached, according to Bloomberg's sources.
- The sources placed the division’s value at up to $5 billion.
Dive Insight:
Medtronic’s business could be sold en masse or broken down into smaller sales if its alleged plans are in fact true. Much of the company's medical supplies inventory was acquired through its purchase of Covidien. Following the $42.9 billion acquisition of the Irish devicemaker, Medtronic had to also pay a settlement amount of $220 million because of a dispute between the International Revenue Service (IRS) and Covidien's previous owner, Tyco International.
Meanwhile, the FDA cleared Medtronic’s noninvasive cardiac electrical mapping system for arrhythmias on Wednesday. The company says the CardioInsight 3-D Mapping system is the first of its kind in the world. It uses a 252-electrode sensor vest worn by the patient to combine the electrocardiogram (ECG) signals it collects with data from a computed tomography (CT) scan of the patient’s heart to create a 3-D electroanatomic map of it.
The CardioInsight system offers a safer way for doctors to pinpoint the source of a patient’s irregular heartbeats, which currently requires threading a catheter through a vein or artery into the heart. Medtronic plans a strategic rollout of the technology in regions where it is cleared. The company acquired CardioInsight in 2016.