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| Olympus TJF-Q180V Duodenoscope--Courtesy of Olympus Australia |
As Olympus faces mounting backlash for endoscope devices linked to the recent superbug outbreaks, Sony ($SNE), the company's largest shareholder, is selling off half its stake to raise funds for strategic investments.
Sony will hand over its shares to JPMorgan Chase, reducing its holding to about 5% to "strengthen its financial resources and obtain funds for growth-oriented strategic investments," the company said in a statement. Olympus and Tokyo-based Sony will still work together after the sale, focusing on a medical business venture formed two years ago, Sony Olympus Medical Solutions.
And Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai has his eye on the rapidly growing imaging market as a potential source of growth. As Bloomberg reports, Hirai has said he wants Sony to move into healthcare equipment by capitalizing on its next-generation image sensors, which are used in smartphones and compact cameras.
The news comes amid growing pushback for duodenoscope devices implicated in the spread of deadly bacteria. Earlier this week, researchers published a paper in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology showing a fatal drug-resistant superbug was spread by contaminated scopes even after a hospital strengthened its cleaning procedures. Virginia Mason Medical Center called for "meticulous manual cleaning" efforts last year after it learned of a superbug outbreak that affected 32 patients and killed 11 individuals. But even with the increased cleaning measures, the hospital found that 3% of the scopes were still contaminated and had to be re-cleaned, Bloomberg reports.
ERCP scopes are used in about half a million procedures in the U.S. each year, and Virginia Mason uses the scopes in about 1,800 procedures a year, hospital spokeswoman Gale Robinette told the news outlet. When all is said and done, one scope a week on average is still contaminated after cleaning. And if every U.S. hospital had a similar rate, it would translate into 15,000 operations performed with dirty ERCP endoscopes each year, according to the Bloomberg story.
Meanwhile, Olympus and the FDA continue to respond to public outcry over the devices since the superbug outbreak at UCLA Medical Center emerged in February. The agency in March revealed that it has not approved the Olympus scope tied to the superbug outbreak at UCLA, even though the company has marketed the device since 2010. Regulators then released final guidelines for cleaning reusable medical equipment, taking a "step toward further reducing the risk of patient infection" by providing manufacturers with cleaning instructions.
Olympus is also responding to the backlash, issuing last week updated cleaning instructions for its Q180V scope. In its "urgent safety notification," the company urged providers to adopt new procedures and said it would ship a small-bristle brush required for the process "no later than May 8." The FDA has signed off on Olympus' latest cleaning instructions and plans to hold an advisory panel meeting on May 14-15 to discuss duodenoscopes' role in spreading infections to patients during surgery.
- read the Bloomberg story
- here's the statement from Sony (PDF)
- get more from Bloomberg