Abbott leads healthcare transformation for sustainability

The programme is part of the global healthcare company’s commitment to further its global sustainability priority of innovating for access and affordability in health.

Abbott’s announcement of the India project took place on Nov 23, just two weeks after the US healthcare company had risen for the first time in Vietnam to lead the list of Top 100 “Vietnam - Best Place to Work 2022”, an award to honour its diverse and innovative working environment.

The latest commitment to the India project, its award in Vietnam, where Abbott has been operating for nearly three decades, along with the company’s technology breakthroughs and products, are all dedicated to cracking healthcare challenges, thereby serving people in more than 160 countries to lead healthier, better lives.

“Physical and mental health is the foundation for peaceful, sustainable societies,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the World Health Summit in October, adding that all people need inclusive, impartial and equitable access to health services to deliver universal health coverage.

Talking about sustainability’s future, WHS President Axel Pris stated that it must start with “the assurance of healthy lives for all on a healthy planet.”

Tasked to bring innovations to people

Abbott has put health at the core of its 2030 Sustainability Plan, which prioritises designing life-changing technologies for access and affordability and aims to extend the reach of innovation to more than 3 billion people globally.

The company has pinpointed specific strategic actions in primary sections advancing healthcare and transforming its business over the next decade. The action plan includes building an innovative workforce, creating a resilient supply chain of the future, modernising an efficient healthcare system, protecting the environment, and improving human health.

Abbott has been relentlessly researching and innovating to generate groundbreaking initiatives and technologies in healthcare, particularly diabetes and cardiovascular issues.

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

The company’s ultramodern initiatives and trailblazing innovations have launched with a close connection between technology and healthcare, ensuring technologies and products for broader access and affordability at every step of development.

As a result, Abbott's innovations provide timely and scientifically accurate information 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, is regarded as a prime and revolutionary innovation that detects current glucose levels and blood glucose trends and patterns. As a result, retrospective information can help patients adjust their lifestyles, help healthcare professionals make better treatment decisions, and limit 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. The Prix Galien is regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in biopharmaceutical research.

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

Abbott has a revolutionary invention in helping treat premature and newborn babies with patent ductus arteriosus, a heart defect that can develop soon after birth. The Amplatzer Piccolo Occluder, a pea-sized device, can help doctors repair holes in tiny hearts of premature 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

Abbott's breakthrough innovations not only offer great support for treatment but also provide scientifically accurate information to help healthcare professionals make appropriate decisions for optimal treatment efficiency, cut medical expenses for patients, and reduce the burden on the medical system.

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

In terms of innovative healthcare solutions, Abbott is proud to mention that its laboratory traumatic brain injury 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

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

Abbott’s Alinity™ i laboratory instrument

When COVID-19 shut down the world's economy and activity, within just months instead of the years required for test development, 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 was ramping 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 first-of-its-kind 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 analyse 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

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

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has recognised Abbott’s life-changing technologies that are advancing the health tech industry and improving people’s lives worldwide with three CES 2023 Innovation Awards, including for Anility m Monkeypox PCR test and Aveir VR Leadless Pacemaker.

For a healthy and sustainable Vietnam

Along with its development in Vietnam since 1995, Abbott has continuously brought comprehensive healthcare technology solutions and products.

It has also worked relentlessly alongside the government, partners, and other stakeholders to advance health equity to address health disparities and break down existing barriers in malnutrition and non-communicable disease challenges, all to ensure Vietnamese people have better health and care.

Since 2006, Abbott has teamed up with Americares and partnered with Giao Diem Humanitarian Foundation to enhance children’s nutrition, mainly in the central provinces of Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue, where child malnutrition rates are among the highest in the country.

For the last 16 years, the programme 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 catch-up growth and unlock growth potential in children at nutritional risk.

The 2021-published report from Vietnam’s National Nutrition Census 2019-2020, led by the Ministry of Health, shows that malnutrition among children under five in Vietnam has steadily decreased. Therefore, lowering the malnutrition rate to under 20 per cent by 2015 under the Millennium development goal was achieved seven years ahead, in 2008. However, efforts must continue for rural and mountainous areas where malnutrition rates remain higher.

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

The programme raises public healthcare awareness to ensure Vietnamese people know how to promote a healthy pregnancy, recognise the importance of breastfeeding, improve the well-being of women and children specifically and then establish family health. Through various activities such as seminars, cooking contests and regular check-ups, the cooperation has significantly improved women’s and community health in Vietnam.

For sustainable health for everyone, in 2019, Abbott brought in a:care, a pioneering initiative that fuses advances in digital tools and behavioural science with a unique approach to support healthcare professionals and empower people to take small, manageable steps to improve the way they follow and keep up with medical treatments 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 medicine and behavioural science experts to find sustainable solutions to adherence, helping improve the health of Vietnamese and people worldwide.

To date, Abbott and the Abbott Foundation have invested nearly $12 million in Vietnam to help address critical health issues, focusing on advancing, preventing and treating chronic diseases, training medical professionals and raising public awareness in healthcare.

“With almost three decades of Abbott in Vietnam, we sustain our long-term partnership programmes 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 work together to change people’s lives for the better, for a healthier and stronger Vietnam.”

Abbott extends partnership to broaden social impact in Vietnam As Vietnam battles the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic since late April, much of the country's resources have been streamlined to treat infected people, limit transmissions, and accelerate the national vaccination campaign.

Abbott leads as Best Place to Work in Vietnam in 2022 Abbott has risen for the first time to lead the list of the top 100 Best Places to Work 2022 in Vietnam, an award to honour the US healthcare company’s diverse and innovative working environment.

Abbott’s technology breakthroughs help shape future diabetes care On World Diabetes day on November 14, the World Health Organization (WHO) organised a global expert discussion forum under the Global Diabetes Compact initiative to galvanise efforts around the world in addressing the global challenges of the disease.