Chuck, I go to a GI related Medical Conference every year where
Olympus is a major Avertiser/sponsor of the conference.
They have a reputation for lavish wining and dining and playing hardball with
their competitors.
Olympus directly infringed Given imaging swallowable pill cam patents and
eventually they cross licensed, but the terms of final settlement were not
disclosed.
My guess is Oly had to pay some sort of royalties.
Ironic that they should be sued over infections from inadequate cleaning of
their scopes:
Scope vendors like Olympus make money selling washing equipment and fluids to
disinfect endoscopes.
They are like a dishwasher using toxic wash fluids which also pumps
disinfecting fluid through the endoscope's lumens.
A friend worked for a company that developed an elegant alternative that
supposedly worked much better.
It used microwaves and water and essentially steam cleaned the scopes lumens
from inside,somewhat like in a microwave oven.This did not require the
profitable wash fluids, and infrastructure from Olympus,so Olympus bought the
company and immediately canned the product.
I believe most of Olympuses profits are from the medical division, so we should
hope they cleanup their act, so they can stay in business to sell cameras as a
sideline!
The description in the linked article about kickbacks and lavish spending on
doctors and decision makers is not unprecedented unfortunately. It is the scale
that is amazing.
I used to work for a large medical company and pharma companies in particular,
but device companies too, take physicians out to lavish dinners and events all
the time.
These relatively minor perks to docs are absolutely routine business practises
by medical companies and usually not considered out of line.
However, over the years there have been some big scandals with things like
frequent prescriber programs : giving docs family holidays or other "prizes" if
they hit target volumes of prescriptions. Other direct kickbacks have involved
sales of devices like heart pacemakers, artificial joints, heart valves and so
it goes. Paying high consulting or lecture fees is another way to give
kickbacks. All on our backs as medical consumers.
Tim
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Olympus mail list <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, March 2, 2016 8:46 AM
Subject: [OM] Olympus to pay $646M over kickbacks and bribes to doctors,
hospitals - The Morning Call
I do hope the camera division is well insulated against the shenanigans
in the medical side of the business.
Chuck Norcutt
<http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-olympus-settles-justice-investigation-20160301-story.html>
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