Sydney: Sleep-breathing device maker ResMed plans to take global a doctor education program aimed at promoting the screening of patients seeking Ozempic-style weight loss drugs for apnea, calling the GLP-1 boom a lift, not a threat, to sales.
ResMed, founded in Australia but now headquartered in California and which gains most of its revenue in the U.S, last week reported an 11% jump in second-quarter profit. Weight-loss drugs had helped sales of its devices that treat sleep apnea – a common disorder characterised by brief interruptions of breathing during sleep.
Rapid uptake of GLP-1 injections in the U.S. is driving patients into primary care clinics where they are typically assessed for comorbidities, including sleep apnea, to get health subsidies.
“It’s a tailwind,” Mick Farrell, chief executive of the maker of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines, said in an interview on Tuesday.
“The question is how much of that tailwind can we capture,” he said. “We’re starting in the U.S. because that’s where pharma does (direct-to-consumer) advertising … but we’ll continue to go around the world on that as we can.”
Some stock analysts previously described ResMed as vulnerable to the explosion in GLP-1 drugs which help with weight loss by suppressing appetite. Sleep apnea is strongly linked to being overweight.
Since the company started its doctor education strategy, ResMed’s sleep-apnea training module has recorded some 60,000 completions in the U.S. alone, Farrell said. The company has 1.95 million patients using its CPAP devices who also have GLP-1 prescriptions.
ResMed products are exempt from tariffs due to being needed by people with a chronic disability. But Farrell, who started this year as chair of the U.S. medical device industry group AdvaMed, said he would lobby the Trump administration to remove tariffs throughout his industry – or at least stabilise them.
“I will be advocating in DC specifically on trade and tariffs for zero-for-zero tariffs for med tech on a humanitarian basis,” he said.
“This administration doesn’t really like zero for zero. They always want to make a deal. So what we’re talking about now is – whether the tariffs are 10% or 5% on med tech. Certainty and locking down a number is better than the uncertainty of not knowing”, he added.
(Reporting by Byron Kaye; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
