Meet the newest medical device manufacturer: CVS

Most of us know CVS as the local pharmacy where we fill our prescriptions (and maybe load up on some guilty pleasures while we're there), but CVS Health has much larger ambitions when it comes to the healthcare ecosystem. Late last year, it embarked on a $69 billion deal to buy health insurance company Aetna. Now, we learn that the company has developed a home dialysis device that it will put into clinical trials later this year. If all goes according to plan, CVS will secure FDA approval and have the medical device on the market by 2020.
In making the announcement, CVS Health said that it will be “approaching this new initiative in a staged approach with phases focused on early disease identification and patient education, followed by the development of a comprehensive home dialysis program, for both hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. The device has been designed with features intended to make home hemodialysis simple and safe for patients, in order to facilitate longer, more frequent treatments. In published clinical research, longer, more frequent hemodialysis treatments lead to better outcomes in appropriate patient populations.”