I heard a rumor that Ortho is thinking of getting out of the blood banking reagent business. Has anyone else heard such a thing?

A vague rumor I think I heard too. Seems like they are spinning off pieces of BB at least (i.e. Rhogam).

They have also re-assigned their BB specialists to be generalists, covering mostly Chemistry products. So that's a little suspicious.

I did hear the Johnson and Johnson is considering selling Ortho

I did hear the Johnson and Johnson is considering selling Ortho

So did I!

Maybe that is why I have not seen my quote Ortho Rep. Also, maybe that is a good reason why I did not get any flack for installing a Echo instead of a Provue.

I know in our area they consolidated the reps. We used to see our previous rep almost once a month and she was very involved with reagent problems, etc. Since the change a few months back we haven't seen the new guy once.

I have seen it in print several times that J&J is looking to sell off the BB and manybe all of the diagnostices. They already sold the RHOGAM to Kedrion.

It is in consideration. See the links

http://www.radmailer.com/t/ViewEmail/r/10AD2E2E2C3715EB/9D9C8F97231376DCC9C291422E3DE149

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-22/j-j-s-forecast-misses-analyst-estimates.html

Yes, they have sold off RHOGAm and are in the process of selling Ortho Diagnostic Division.

Edited March 12, 201312 yr by aafrin
spelling mistake

This has been an ongoing project for J&J since the late 80's. They have never found a buyer that could meet their price. Price is the bottom line for all J&J afiliates and the Diagnostics Division has never met the required profit margin. Blood Bank is a mature market where many of the customers buy on price rather than quality. Still no matter what happens I do not believe the product line will just drop off the market. The other small companies out there may see this as an opportunity to get a bigger foothold in the market. Immucor has bought anyone else of consequence so I can't see them buying the Ortho line. Let's hope wherever the company does end up it is with an investor that will but some money into R&D. We need to keep competion in the market healthy so that we can keep providing better, faster care for our patients.

I think Immucor is committed to a future in molecular so won't want to buy Ortho. Also, they were bought awhile back by an investment company that does turn-arounds I think so they may not be in a position to buy it. I would like Bio-Rad to buy Ortho and market the machine Ortho is planning instead of their older automated platform--but then I guess we would be back to no competition on gel reagents.