INNOBLOG

February is American Heart Month. In honor of this we thought we'd pick up on an Innovator's Insight written by Scott Anthony in April 2005 on the Philips home heart defribillator. The home defibrillator is a $1k home-version of the technically-sophisticated defibrillators used in hospital emergency rooms to restart the heart of Sudden Cardiac Arrest victims. The device gives regular untrained people ("nonconsumers of the professional versions) the ability to save a persons life. Heartwarming Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) success stories have been in the news lately as offices, gyms and schools are beginning to require installation of the devices.

A natural extension of this home kit is providing AED/CPR training to this new group of consumers. Philips Medical doesn't seem well positioned to provide such training as a company that sells medical equipment through sales reps to hospitals and medical professionals. Creating a low-end training program targeted at homeowners and office workers is not part of Philips business model. Recognizing the importance of the training, Laerdal Medical and the American Heart Association created The Heartsaver AED Anytime program. It is a self-directed learning product designed to provide condensed, science-based training to get more people trained in CPR and the use of an AED in just 2 hours. The course includes device-specific training on the full line of Philips HeartStart Defibrillators. The kit sells for anywhere between $34-$70 online. Philips is able to distribute the training program by innovating their business model. Instead of selling a Philips-branded high margin durable through sales reps to medically-trained professionals, they are distributing low-end training that is produced and marketed by another company. By partnering with another company and distributing the product online, Philips is able to provide a valuable services to a group of customers in a market that it traditionally does not serve.