A Robust Response to Respiratory Season

With a recent acquisition and continued innovation, QuidelOrtho is committed to bringing testing closer to the patient.

With COVID, flu and RSV all making headlines, this year’s respiratory season promises to be one for the ages. One market leader ready to meet that demand is QuidelOrtho. The diagnostics company has undergone a transformation during the past few years with its acquisition of some Alere business and the acquisition of Ortho Clinical Diagnostics.

In a recent podcast, Repertoire Publisher Scott Adams spoke to QuidelOrtho Chairman and CEO Doug Bryant about some of those changes and what it means for supply chain leaders.

Scott Adams, Publisher: With the acquisition of Ortho, you have essentially doubled overnight. Talk to me about running an operation that doubled and integrating all the complexities.

Doug Bryant, Chairman and CEO, QuidelOrtho Corp.: We need to be as good as we can be in order to achieve what I would call transformational events from time to time. Can your organization come together, rise to the challenge that’s in front of you and get it done? Can you do it in a way that keeps everybody intact, keeps everybody motivated in wanting to do the next big thing?

In the Alere asset acquisition, we basically doubled our revenue at the time. We also had to operate in 130 different countries and set up order to cash systems. And we had to put in place the backbone and the infrastructure in all those countries. In some cases, we commercialized on our own and in other cases we were heavily reliant on distribution.

It was easier in the U.S. because we knew the players and had such great relationships with them, but we didn’t outside of the U.S. We were trying to vet various distribution partners and make decisions on how to go to market in those countries with the products we had. It’s far easier now when we’re merging with a company that already had that.

Secondly, we went from zero to 16 million tests per week with QuickVue as well as millions of tests per week with COVID

We were one of the first companies in the market with a PCR test. We clearly didn’t have the manufacturing capacity to compete, but we built it. We had a head start with QuickVue, but we were competing with some big companies who had scale already. That was transformational.

Our people started believing in our capability. We took a company that was small and got in the ring against the big guys. We got big pretty quickly. With the cash we had on hand and our ability to access capital markets, we’ve been able to pull this off pretty nicely.

Adams: We were talking about a heightened respiratory season compared to the last several respiratory seasons. That bodes well for QuidelOrtho and the next couple of quarters. But what do you guys have that’s coming that distributors can look forward to?

Bryant: We can count on a respiratory season that we haven’t seen in a few years. When we have robust respiratory seasons, our distribution partners do really well.

Our increased capacity and control of our supply chains could be a competitive advantage for us because our competition has already said that they won’t have product for a while. We started ramping up a while ago, so we’re going to be in pretty good shape.

To add some more boxes and make up for our competitors’ shortfalls is going to put a lot of strain on our operations team, but they’re up for it. That’s the number one thing.

Long-term, there are probably about 20 of our projects tied to new assays for Sofia. Those in distribution that have been so helpful in placing all those Sofias are going to be the beneficiaries because we’re just going to have more product. I think that sort of relationship bodes well for both of us.

Bryant: We have both a unique opportunity relative to our competitors to compete in a segment that I call not too big and not too small. For the medium hospital lab, small reference lab and clinics associated with those hospitals, we’re uniquely positioned because we can provide products into the central lab all the way out to the clinics. That’s a little bit unusual.

Pair that with the fact that we’re in transfusion medicine. So, every hospital that does blood typing knows their Ortho rep, which means everybody knows the Ortho rep. Our market share in that particular segment is very high.

We’re also seeing a continued movement to bring testing closer to the patient. That could be in a hospital setting, but it also could be urgent care or the physician office. The train has left the station in terms of the public understanding that if you don’t feel well, maybe you should go get tested for something.

There’s an expectation on the part of the average person that if they see a physician, they expect to get a test and they want to know the answer. Then if it’s treatable, they want to be treated on the spot. That’s another factor we will bring to our distribution partners – the ability to keep moving products closer to where the patient lives.

Adams: Where does QuidelOrtho fit into the competitive landscape? How are you unique from your competitors?

On the donor screening side, we do really well, particularly with red cells. And we would love to do even better on the plasma side, which is the growing component of donor screening these days.

Not every diagnostics company has a transfusion medicine business. There aren’t that many. That makes us look a little bit different than just about everybody.