KEY POINTS:
A medical breathing device that can sense when patients are asleep will help tap into the premium end of a rapidly growing market, says Fisher & Paykel Healthcare.
The listed breathing products maker launched the hi-tech device - an auto-adjusting flow generator for treating obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA)
- yesterday at the Worldsleep07 medical congress in Australia.
The OSA treatment market accounted for 46 per cent of Fisher & Paykel's $349.2 million revenue in the year ending March.
Paul Shearer, senior vice-president for sales and marketing, said the new product took more than five years to develop.
"It's a very important product and it required a huge amount of effort and work," Shearer said. "It's a category in the market that we haven't been playing in."
The global market for OSA treatment was worth about US$1.8 billion ($2.5 billion), with the flow generator segment worth up to US$900 million.
The new product was targeted at demand for auto-adjusting devices that accounted for about 20 per cent of the flow generator segment.
The market was moving towards more sophisticated products and competition was strong, Shearer said.
The device incorporated technology for sensing when the patient was awake and automatically dropping the pressure to a resting level, before raising it again when they fell asleep. The unit was about the size of a shoe box and could sit on a bedside table connected to the patient bya tube and a mask.
Treatment data could also be collected using a USB flash memory device for review by the patient's doctor.
Goldman Sachs JBWere analyst Marcus Curley said it was a relatively bigstep forward for the company as it entered into the premium end of the market.
"It's the last of the major areas within the existing market which they can access," Curley said.
The technology was unusual in terms of the product being offered.
Curley said the new product reinforced the innovative approach at Fisher & Paykel, "which is obviously crucial in an industry which is as fast changing as medical devices."
The company had flagged yesterday's product launch at last month's annual meeting.
Forsyth Barr analyst Guy Hallwright said the company was filling out the product range to match the competition.
"In some cases they're coming in a little bit later, they're hopefully coming in with devices which actually can incorporate improvements over the devices that are already in the market from the other players."
Shares closed up 5c yesterday at $3.43.