A “dividend aristocrat,” Abbott Laboratories has paid and increased its base dividend every year for 50 years. In addition to investing heavily in new product R&D, Abbott’s ability to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to digital technology has also helped the company maintain its competitive advantage. 

"If there's anything that helps healthcare technology workers stay ahead in a competitive industry, it's trendspotting — always looking for what comes next,” according to Rahul Avasthy, lead of digital transformation and experience at Abbott. 

And that’s exactly what Abbott Labs has been doing so well: spotting the next big healthcare technology trend and capitalizing on it. In recent years, this has meant building new, digital-first products that allow patients to take their health decisions into their own hands. 

Using Data to Enhance Patient Care

Though data has always served as the backbone of modern medicine, it is only within the past decade or so that data has been approached as a pharmaceutical product within itself. Increasingly, medical device companies such as Abbott Labs are creating new data-driven products that allow patients to access their own medical data and use it to make more informed lifestyle decisions. 

For example, in 2019, Abbott became the first medical device company to introduce a smartphone app glucose reader in the United States when it received FDA clearance to launch FreeStyle LibreLink. As explained on the Abbott website, “enables users to hold their iPhone near their FreeStyle Libre or FreeStyle Libre 14 Day sensor to instantly capture and view their real-time glucose levels, assess their eight-hour glucose history, and see a directional arrow indicating how their glucose is changing. FreeStyle LibreLink app also includes a series of in-app reports that visualize trends and patterns that help people understand how well they are controlling their glucose.”

In January 2021, Abbott launched NeuroSphere™ myPath™, a digital health app designed to track and report on patient perceived pain relief and general well-being associated with spinal cord stimulation (SCS) or dorsal root ganglion (DRG) therapy. In addition to simplifying reporting outcomes, the app connects patients to physicians who have real-time access to this data as well as educational resources to help them more effectively manage their symptoms. 

To further enhance the NeuroSphere myPath experience, just a couple of months later, Abbott launched the NeuroSphere Virtual Clinic, an in-app video chat service with integrated remote device programming. This enabled physicians to talk to their patients and update treatment settings without meeting in person, something many patients did not feel comfortable doing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Future of Digital Behavioral Health 

In January 2022, Abbott Labs made history by being the first health care company to headline the Consumer Electronic Show (CES). During the keynote, the company’s CEO, Robert B. Ford, revealed the company’s latest innovation: Lingoi wearables. 

Using proprietary sensor technology, Lingoi enables users to track key signals in the body such as glucose, ketones and lactate, and, eventually, alcohol levels. As Ford explained in his keynote, using Lingoi wearables “will be like having a window into your body. It's science that you will be able to access any time so you can understand what your body is telling you and what it needs. Our vision is that Lingo will go far beyond today's wearables for consumers to help you proactively manage your health, nutrition and athletic performance."

Using digital technology, Abbott Labs has successfully reimagined what it means to be a “medical device company.” Which begs the question, how are you using digital technology? To simply maintain the status quo or build something new?