Alere has become a popular name for a digital health sector that’s hoping to see some early-stage acquisitions. But every read-between-the-lines comment from Dr. Craig Keyes, the company’s president of health management, says Alere is likely standing pat (for now).
Keyes wouldn’t comment on the most recent rumor – that the company would snap up the digital diabetes solution WellDoc. But Keyers, attending the World Health Care Congress in Washington, D.C., did say: “We have a lot of pieces to execute on a connected health strategy. We do feel we have an ample portfolio and are headed in the right direction.
“The way we look at things – it’s a function of what capability, what talent, what techniques, what tools and tactics have have been refined,” Keyes said Tuesday. “It has to fit into this notion of creating information, sharing information or influencing behavior. We’re quite open to evaluating that spectrum.
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“At this point, we have lot of things to work with. We have an ample portfolio in the work of engaging health.”
In theory, Alere would be a natural buyer for any promising emerging digital health industry. The company is building on its diagnostics, health monitoring and health IT platforms to help health systems make better diagnoses and other decisions in the lab, hospital or home. It also grows through acquisitions and has bought the likes of Epocal, eScreen and Arriva Medical, among others, since 2012.
Plus, there’s more than just the Rock Health-inspired WellDoc prediction floating around. I’m hearing that many big players are considering moving quickly on a series of digital solutions at an extremely early stage.
However, Alere has a need for focus. Some analysts have pinged the public company for not maximizing the value of these acquisitions. What’s more, the size of many of the companies Alere has purchased are well beyond the scale of digital health apps.
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That doesn’t mean they’re not paying attention.
“One piece of advice I would give (digital health): focus on the results,” Keyes said. “That is where healthcare is headed. It isn’t enough to generate imagination and hope. We’re not selling perfume. This is health. While creativity will be hugely valuable it will be so only to the extent it can translate into real change that will it be sufficiently valued.”
That same idea can be assigned to the diagnostic market, which makes up a big part of Alere’s strategy. Privately, some healthcare executives are concerned the ability of diagnostics are sprinting too far ahead of clinical medicine. A diagnostic test can identify a problem, for example, but then there’s little that can be done about it.
Keyes acknowledged the challenge.
“To the extent a diagnostic can generate change – it’s hard to argue that’s not useful,” he said. “But there are a number of tests that may not particularly influence anything. There are a number of tests that may not drive an outcome.
“That’s not really innovation in health. It’s an innovation in applied science.”
[Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]
