Abbott’s initiatives drive partnership in healthcare

Abbott announced it has committed to upgrading 75 primary health centers to Health and Wellness Centers (HWCs) in India by early 2024 in partnership with Americares India Foundation in a project intended to serve over 2.5 million people from under-resourced communities every year.

The India project was announced on Nov. 23, just two weeks after the U.S. healthcare company had risen for the first time to lead the list of “Top 100 Best Place to Work in Vietnam 2022”, an award to honor its diverse and innovative working environment.

In its 2030 Sustainability Plan, Abbott has pinpointed specific strategic actions in advancing healthcare and transforming business, aiming to extend the reach of innovation to more than 3 billion people globally. The action plan includes building an innovative workforce, creating a resilient supply chain, modernizing the healthcare system, protecting the environment, and improving human health.

Abbott has been researching to generate initiatives and technologies in healthcare in general and particularly diabetes and cardiovascular issues.

By the end of 2021, the company’s technologies and products, spanning from nutrition and pharmaceuticals to diagnostics and medical devices, have helped improve the lives of 2.2 billion people worldwide.

The company’s initiatives were launched to ensure technologies and products are more accessible and affordable. Its innovations aim to help doctors and professionals make the right decisions, thus enhancing treatment efficiency.

Abbott’s FreeStyle Libre, the world’s leading wearable glucose monitoring sensor-based technology, detects not only current glucose level but also blood glucose trends and patterns. Retrospective information can be used to help patients adjust their lifestyle and help healthcare professionals make better treatment decisions and crack the risks of diabetes complications.

The FreeStyle Libre system, launched in Vietnam in March 2021, has received the “Best Medical Technology” of the last 50 years at the Prix Galien Golden Jubilee Awards, one of Abbott’s 11 Prix Galien Awards.

Abbott is also developing a dual-monitoring system that enables monitoring glucose and ketone levels simultaneously.

In helping treat premature and newborn babies with patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), a heart defect that can develop soon after birth, Abbott’s Amplatzer Piccolo Occluder, a pea-sized device, can help doctors repair holes in tiny hearts of premature babies and infants weighing as little as 700 grams (about 1.5 pounds) without riskier surgery. The technology is now available in Vietnam.

Amplatzer Piccolo Occluder is a pea-sized, minimally-invasive device used for the treatment of PDA for premature infants and newborns. Photo by Abbott

Abbott’s innovations help healthcare professionals make appropriate decisions for optimal treatment efficiency, to cut medical expenses for patients as well as to reduce the burden on the medical system.

Abbott received the prestigious recognition as the 2020 World Changing Company of the Year by Fast Company, a title to honor the company’s innovative efforts to improve lives.

In terms of innovative healthcare solutions, Abbott’s laboratory traumatic brain injury (TBI) blood test received the CE Mark, which permits marketing in the European Union.

The lab-based traumatic brain injury (TBI) blood test helps clinicians evaluate individuals with suspected mild TBIs. Photo by Abbott

The lab-based TBI blood test, which is expected to be available in Vietnam soon, is designed to provide clinicians a more objective and definitive method of concussion evaluation while enabling more rapid triaging of patients without the need for CT scans. The test runs on Abbott’s Alinity i laboratory instrument.

When Covid-19 shut down the world’s economy and activity, within just months instead of years required for test development process, Abbott developed a comprehensive portfolio of Covid-19 tests to confront the virus in different ways, including rapid antigen, molecular and serology tests. Then the company ramped up capabilities to offer the world the testing it needed to track infections and get people back to normal.

The company also formed the Abbott Pandemic Defense Coalition, a global scientific network dedicated to identifying new viral threats, taking quick action when one is discovered, and helping prevent future pandemics.

The coalition continues the company’s decades of leadership in virus surveillance with its Global Viral Surveillance Program and helps analyze virus samples for unknown diseases and detect mutations and variants.

Laboratory technicians from members of the Abbott Pandemic Defense Coalition undergo training at AP8 in Abbott Park, Ill. Photo by Abbott

This is an important part of the company’s work to create new technologies to detect, monitor and transform the care for patients of infectious diseases such as Covid-19, HIV, malaria, and hepatitis, as well as the future’s pandemic threats.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has recognized Abbott’s technologies with three CES 2023 Innovation Awards, including for Anility m Monkeypox PCR test and Aveir VR Leadless Pacemaker.

For a healthy and sustainable Vietnam

In Vietnam since 1995, Abbott has worked alongside the government, partners, and other stakeholders to address health disparities and break down barriers in malnutrition and non-communicable disease challenges.

Since 2006, Abbott has teamed up with Americares and partnered with Giao Diem Humanitarian Foundation to enhance nutrition of children, mainly in the central provinces of Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue.

For the last 16 years, the program has provided training courses, food processing equipment, medical diagnostic tools, and educational materials. Abbott also offers PediaSure, a clinically proven innovative nutrition solution to help promote growth in children.

Abbott has cooperated with the Vietnam Women’s Union for more than a decade to promote breast milk and breastfeeding, and to expand healthcare and nutrition education across the country.

For sustainable health for everyone, in 2019 Abbott brought in a:care, a pioneering initiative that fuses advances in digital tools and behavioral science to support healthcare professionals and empower people to take small, manageable steps to improve the way they follow and keep up with medical treatments in order to raise the quality of life.

The company has hosted the global a:care Congress 2021 and 2022 to gather expertise from the world’s leading experts in medicine and behavioral science to find sustainable solutions to adherence, helping improve the health of Vietnamese in particular and people around the world in general.

To date, Abbott and the Abbott Foundation have invested nearly VND280 billion (US$12 million) in Vietnam to help address critical health issues, with a focus on advancing, preventing and treating chronic diseases, training medical professionals and raising public awareness on healthcare.

“With almost three decades in Vietnam, we sustain our long-term partnership programs to tackle healthcare challenges and remove barriers in malnutrition and chronic diseases,” said Divisional Vice President and General Manager of Abbott in Vietnam, Douglas Kuo.

“With sustainability commitment at the forefront, we dedicatedly work together to change people’s lives for the better, for a healthier and stronger Vietnam,” he added.