A look at 2015

It’s hard to believe 2015 is at an end. We certainly had our fair share of challenges last year, but we also made tremendous progress in our efforts to create a new baseline for Cook and to build an even stronger, more efficient company. There is much work to be done for sure. But our plan is well under way, and 2016 will see even bigger improvements to our systems and processes.

We will have more information for you about our transformation as the year progresses, but for now let’s take a quick look back at the results of all of our hard work in 2015.

What’s in the numbers

We’ll start our update with a simple number. 32,948,291. Thirty-two million, nine-hundred and forty-eight thousand, two-hundred and ninety-one.

That’s a big number… it’s also the number of medical devices we shipped to customers around the world in 2015. All of us, at some point, get wrapped up in our day to day jobs but it’s important to remember why we show up to work every day. Millions of patients’ lives are made better by our collective efforts. Thank you for all that you have done for Cook and the millions of patients who needed our products in 2015.

Despite the challenges in 2015, our business continued to progress, we added new companies and capabilities, and many of our companies passed important milestones along the way. Here are some of the highlights:

This year, MED Institute spun off to serve external companies in product testing, regulatory submission support and clinical study management. (We renamed the team that still serves Cook Medical’s needs as Cook Research Inc.) The new MED brought in almost $1 million in their first year. They also opened a satellite office adjacent to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio to support the needs of companies at the Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center.

Cook Regentec is a new company that we established to focus on products supporting regenerative medicine. Regentec offices are located in Indianapolis, Bloomington, West Lafayette, and Denmark. Regentec puts us squarely in the middle of a rapidly evolving field of cellular and biologic therapies.

Big news this month

Some of the best news we received all year was the temporary suspension of the U.S. medical device tax. The 2.3% tax on all U.S. sales of medical devices will be put on pause for two years, saving our company millions each year. That’s money we can put back into the company — adding the resources we need and reinstating some of the expansion plans we put on pause when the device tax went into effect.

One physician’s perspective

Check out this video story that was first presented at the APAC sales meeting earlier this year. Dr. Leger’s perspective and circumstances may be unique, but I think his belief in doing the hard work is something we share with him.

(You may have trouble viewing this video if you have recently updated your device to the latest iOS. You can access the video at  https://vimeo.com/143040650 using this password: cookapac .)

As we close out 2015, I would like to wish you and your families a very Happy New Year. I can’t wait to see what we will build together in 2016. The best is yet to come.

-Pete