How Johnson & Johnson is using digital transformation for healthcare

When it comes to companies that have come to the attention of the world along with the corona pandemic, the first companies that come to mind are mostly IT-related tech companies.

It is a natural phenomenon that occurred as our field of activity changed from face-to-face to non-face-to-face.

At the same time, as the topic of health, an important value for mankind, has been re-emerged, there is one more sector that has received attention.

That's the healthcare field. Digital transformation is also taking place in the healthcare sector.

.Johnson & Johnson is regarded as the strongest company in the healthcare sector.

Let's find out together how they have grown and what changes they are trying.

Birth of Johnson & Johnson's

Johnson & Johnson is an American pharmaceutical company headquartered in Brunswick, New Jersey.

Johnson & Johnson's corporate status is evaluated as a leading company in the health care sector to the extent that it is included in the Dow Jones 30 companies that represent the industry average index of the US stock market (Related: IS INFLATION GOOD OR BAD? 3 UNDENIABLE OUTCOMES OF INFLATION MUST NEEDED TO CONSIDER)

Johnson & Johnson was founded in New Brunswick in 1886 by three Johnson brothers, Robert Wood Johnson, James Wood Johnson, and Edward Mead Johnson.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Innovative Brothers Who Founded Johnson & Johnson in 1886[/caption]

It started with Robert Wood Johnson listening to a lecture on disinfection methods in a surgical clinic and building a factory with his brothers to produce sterilized surgical bandages, gauze and threads.

After that, after commercializing disposable bandages with sterilized bandages, they continued to develop and become a pharmaceutical and hygiene-related company.

As Johnson & Johnson started as a pharmaceutical company, the products it produces are directly related to the health of consumers, so the founder makes an effort to establish the right value system within the company by creating what is called 'our credo'.

The value system is to be responsible for all consumers of the product, and includes integrity, respect, responsibility, fairness, interest, and citizenship.

This means that we are responsible for all of humanity, which Johnson & Johnson employees around the world read every year and sign our compliance signatures.

In addition, once every two years, we devote ourselves to studying the organization's responses to employee perceptions, trends, and issues for employees around the world.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="446"] Johnson & Johnson and Tylenol Incident[/caption]

It was the Tylenol incident that brought this value to light.

In 1982, in Chicago, someone injected cyanide into Tylenol capsules, and people who took it died.

Tylenol, a core product of Johnson & Johnson, was a product that had a significant impact on sales, and this incident resulted in a sharp drop in sales and damage to the company's image.

As a result of the investigation, it was revealed that someone had put cyanide in the capsule after the product was produced at the Johnson & Johnson plant, but it was not known how much and to what extent.

Damage to Product Reliability Johnson & Johnson will promptly collect all products and destroy all Tylenol capsules produced in the United States.

In addition, all matters in the investigation stage are disclosed to the public to renew the corporate image.

After making the decision to stop selling all Tylenol products, and even to stop selling all capsules, the drug is then made into tablets.

As pharmaceuticals are products where consumer trust is absolutely important, Johnson & Johnson's actions are considered to be very appropriate and important.

As a result of this incident, Johnson & Johnson was reborn as a company trusted by consumers and has been able to carry on that legacy to this day.

Johnson & Johnson products

Johnson & Johnson was founded as a pharmaceutical company, but is now the global No. 1 healthcare and pharmaceutical company that produces household health products and medical devices.

Let's take a look at representative products.

Johnson's Baby Lotion.

Johnson's baby lotion and oil products are also related to Johnson & Johnson's founding as a pharmaceutical.

This product was born as an effort to create a product that is hypoallergenic and moisturizing by catching the hearts of parents who want to take good care of the skin diseases that babies suffered from childhood affect them even after they become adults and that the skin scars do not go away easily.

Acuvue lenses

 

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="429"] Acuvue Oasys[/caption]

 

The fact that a lens is included in Johnson & Johnson's product line seems a bit out of the way, but Acuvue Lens is also one of the best products with a long tradition.

Founded in 1988, the Acuvue brand has proven its effectiveness and reputation enough to occupy the world's No. 1 market for daily wear soft contact lenses.

 

 

 

In addition to this, Tylenol, Clean & Clear, and Listerine, which are famous for mouthwash, also have a lineup of diapers, sanitary napkins, and powder.

If you go to a large mart and check the manufacturer of the product, it has been a long time since it has already established itself as an indispensable company in our lives by launching so many products and brands that you can tell that this product was also Johnson & Johnson.

Not only this.

Johnson & Johnson also has a medical device business that deals with medical devices used in surgery and treatment, which is an important part of the company, accounting for 28% of its total sales.

As such, sales through various consumer goods and medical devices serve as a cash cow for Johnson & Johnson, laying the foundation for growth and profitability in the pharmaceutical sector.

Based on this, more than 20% of the profits are invested in R&D every year, and even digital innovation is connected.

This is called Johnson & Johnson innovation.

Johnson & Johnson's Digital Transformation

So let's take a look at how Johnson & Johnson is driving digital transformation.

The first area where Johnson & Johnson is applying digital innovation in the digitization of medical products.

Learn more about such medical innovations: PROSTHETIC LEGS OF PARALYMPIC ATHLETES – WHERE IS IT MADE?  

We propose 4 ways to manage your health using the latest smart devices, and let's look at each of them.

At first...

We have developed an app to help predict the onset of allergies.

Allergies that occur with the change of seasons cause swollen tonsils, red eyes, and dry skin.

Johnson & Johnson analyzed data and researched when consumers bought and took allergy medications, and found that it was associated with an environmental fact that for some reason they were taking when pollen counts were low.

In contrast, consumers did not have the information they needed to understand what the allergy situation was like on a specific date in their area.

Johnson & Johnson's allergy treatment drug Zyrtec brand department has launched an app, 'AllergyCast'.

'AllergyCast' provides consumers with daily data on the number of pollen in their residential area along with the level of allergy impact by consumer.

Based on this, consumers can find ways to effectively manage seasonal allergies.

 

The second is to help manage rheumatoid arthritis.

It is a wearable tracker.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="404"] Fitness Trackers 2021[/caption]

Johnson & Johnson has developed a rheumatoid arthritis remote assessment app for patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

The app works with wearable activity trackers like 'FitBit' or 'Garmin' to collect behavioral and health information such as heart rate, steps, sleep duration and daily joint pain level.

And it's put together to track and manage whether a patient's condition is worsening or improving.

Patient records are automatically linked to the attending physician to help you monitor their progress, and their purpose is to help ensure that patients receive appropriate treatment without having to go to the hospital every day.

The third is the OneTouch Verio Flex app that helps you measure your blood sugar.

For people with diabetes, maintaining blood sugar levels can be quite stressful.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="318"] Onetouch verio flex[/caption]

Johnson & Johnson launched a blood glucose meter called OneTouch Verio Flex for diabetic patients and linked it to a smart device so that the results of the blood glucose test were automatically linked to the doctor in charge.

This will enable both doctors and patients to respond in a timely manner to emergencies in response to changes in blood sugar levels.

Fourth, we created an app to determine whether surgery is necessary because of joint pain.

Based on historical clinical data, Johnson & Johnson found that, in the United States, it takes an average of 7 to 11 years for patients who first experience knee pain to schedule surgery to treat it.

At the same time, clinical data also shows that, for those who ultimately need surgery, having surgery sooner leads to better outcomes.

Building on this, Johnson & Johnson has launched an interactive app that can accelerate surgical consultations with people with joint pain who meet certain criteria.

The app helps patients self-diagnose and register them with participating hospital systems to receive surgical consultations.

This is expected to improve the blind spots of conventional surgical treatment or the inability to provide timely treatment due to long delays.

 

Johnson & Johnson's Surgical Robots

Looking at the four digital transformations of Johnson & Johnson so far, we see that data is used to provide services that patients were not able to receive, helping them lead healthier lives.

Up to this point, you can think of it as a pretty cool level of digital transformation.

But Johnson & Johnson is preparing for a more digital transformation than this.

It is the challenge of developing surgical robots.

As mentioned earlier, considering that a company called Johnson & Johnson has medical devices on the three major axes of sales along with pharmaceuticals and consumer goods, it is a possible challenge.

In the United States, an average of 29.99 million surgeries are performed a year, and robotic surgery accounts for only 5% of these surgeries.

We aim to raise this figure to 75% to 90% in the future.

Check this video>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpI6VVUpH9k&ab_channel=Johnson%26Johnson

To achieve this, the conditions that the surgical robot wants to have are reduced to three things.

First, surgical robots are a medical platform, providing surgeons with the best information at the right time and helping them interpret what they see inside the patient.

This can also help you perform surgeries that you could not do before.

Second, it allows more people to enjoy the benefits of surgery by reducing the cost of surgery.

Third, when different surgical robots are connected through the Internet, rapid learning is facilitated by mutual exchange.

This makes more operations possible and accumulates more data, which in turn contributes to improving the intelligence of the surgical robot.

In the long run, the popularization of surgical robots could increase medical productivity.

The project, which started in 2015, looks like something out of a science-fiction movie, and there were many concerns about whether this imagination could be commercialized.

However, at the end of 2020, Johnson & Johnson will unveil Ottava, a surgical robot platform.

The name Ottabara means octave in Italian, and it means to play music one octave higher.

This is because Ottava, Johnson & Johnson's surgical robot platform, is an entry into a completely new level compared to the existing surgical robot platform.

This is because Ottava is equipped with six robotic arms that provide greater flexibility and control than existing surgical robots, allowing easy patient access in the operating room and even securing a large operating room space.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="494"] Product Review: Johnson & Johnson Ottava[/caption]

There are still many problems such as clinical trials and legal improvement before commercialization in the development stage.

However, there is no doubt that the development of surgical robots will revolutionize medical services.

In particular, in the case of developing countries, where medical services are inferior to those of developed countries,
Expectations are high due to the advantage of introducing robotic surgery and providing medical services that were previously unimaginable.

In addition, the standardization of medical technology may be achieved so that the need for patients to go to a hospital in a large city may no longer be necessary.

Of course, there are many problems that need to be improved and supplemented, but surgical robots seem to have many positive aspects for improving human health.

How Johnson & Johnson Supports Healthy Lives for Humanity

The three brothers, the founders of Johnson & Johnson, started their business by making products using sterilized bandages in the hopes that people could have simple treatments without specialized medical services.

Two years later, railroad workers could not access hospitals, so even simple injuries could not be treated, leading to fatal injuries.

To ameliorate this problem, the Johnson brothers researched what types of items were most useful and created the first first aid kits containing sterile wound bands, alcohol swabs, and surgical tape.

The company that started like that has now been reborn as a global pharmaceutical company, and in the future, it has even challenged the creation of surgical robots.

I think the purpose of Johnson & Johnson's use of digital innovation in the medical sector is to support a healthy life for mankind.