Healthy optimism as global firm spends more on research

WHILe saving costs has become the focus for thousands of businesses across Yorkshire and beyond, B Braun Medical refuses to be drawn into a cost-cutting war with its rivals.

The Sheffield-based arm of the global B Braun Group of companies, which develop, manufacture and distribute a range of healthcare products, says it is focusing on collaborating with the NHS to help the organisation save money rather than competing on price alone.

According to the 2010 Global Innovation 1000 report, by global management consulting firm Booz & Company, research and development among the world’s top spenders on innovation dropped in 2009 for the first time in the 13 years studied,

By contrast, B Braun Medical, which has a £120m turnover, is spending a third more on research and development (R&D) than it did before the recession, and more than a quarter of the products in its portfolio were launched in the last five years.

The group spends six per cent of its overall turnover on R&D. UK chief executive Hans Hux, said: “Two years ago, we made a conscious decision to substantially increase the amount we spend on R&D. The understanding was that if we wanted to secure the future growth of the business and remain market leader in many of our areas, we have to make extra efforts to keep the pipeline fed with new products.”

Recent successes for the company include securing sole distribution rights to the UK market for Quill SRS, a breakthrough in wound-closure technology which will cut theatre time and reduce the risk of infection. It has also developed the SeQuent Please angioplasty balloon catheter which has become the subject of the first medical technology guidance issued by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

In addition, it received a national award for its Introcan Safety cannula – a device which reduces the risk of needle injuries to healthcare workers and cuts the infection risk for patients.

Mr Hux said that although the NHS is continuing to invest, there is a greater emphasis on proving that new products and services actually work.

Collaborative working between the public and private sector is becoming more prevalent and something on which B Braun is keen to lead.

“We are not competing at the low end in terms of pricing, so we add a service element to customers where we advise them on processes, which has always been part of our selling process,” said Mr Hux. “We don’t want to be a company that compares one product to another and ends up discussing pennies in pricing. We want to go for the bigger picture.”

He added: “When we launch a product, we have clinical education specialists who help people to introduce the technology. We are a commercial enterprise, but at the same time we want to make sure that what we provide is used in the best possible way and money is not wasted.”

B Braun also carries out surgical instrument audits in hospitals to analyse what instruments are needed, whether any are redundant and which need replacing.

“Very early on, when the economy was declining, we focused on combining products and services to become less dependent on hospital extensions and projects, which have suffered in the recession,” said Mr Hux.

He is also in favour of the devolution of power to GPs.

“We see patient choice as a good thing for our organisation,” he said.

The company is already encouraging patients to make their own choices with a campaign into navigated knee-replacement technology, providing patients and GPs with information about the procedure, a campaign which is set to expand into other areas.

“We were two years ahead of the announcement that GPs were going to fix their own budgets,” said Mr Hux.

He believes the growth opportunities for the company lie in specialist areas such as orthopaedic surgery and neurosurgery as well as safety technology.

“We work best in very specific areas,” he added.

170 years in healthcare

B BRAUN has been in business for the past 170 years and has a turnover of £3.8bn.

The group, which is one of the world’s largest suppliers of the international healthcare markets, operates in almost 50 countries employing more than 38,132 employees in 140 subsidiaries. The last few years have seen dramatic development of the organisation, adding new products and services into its product portfolio. B Braun Medical, based in Sheffield, employs more than 1,000 people.