Roche Diagnostics receives Frost and Sullivan awards for its pioneering excellence in the European in vitro diagnostics industry
Roche Diagnostics's exceptional performance in 2002 has been recognised by international growth consultant Frost and Sullivan, whichhonoured the company with two prestigious market engineering awards.
Roche received the Leadership Award for the European market's nucleic acid-based amplification kits.
It also won the Product Differentiation Innovation Award for the European cardiac risk assessment markers market.
"At Roche Diagnostics we are proud to have won these awards for proBNP and PCR.
They will be an incentive for all of us to bring further innovations for the in-vitro diagnostics market This will help our customers to improve the quality and safety of their services", says Manfred Baier, head of the business area lab network at Roche Diagnostics.
As the first company to enter the natriuretic peptide (NP) market with a laboratory-based test, offering the pro-brain natriuretic peptide (proBNP) assay on its Elecsys system, Frost says Roche Diagnostics is a worthy recipient of the Product Differentiation Innovation Award.
Prior to this groundbreaking product development in 2002, no other laboratory-based NP test was commercially available.
A recent end-user study has shown that Roche Diagnostics is set to make immediate gains due to the wide existing base of Elecsys analyser machines in hospital laboratories.
ProBNP is set to become an essential tool to combat cardiac heart failure.
It is anticipated to have among the highest rates of growth, expanding into the fourth largest cardiac risk markers market as early as 2005. "Since Roche is the exclusive licence holder to the rights to proBNP testing in the cardiac risk assessment field, any company looking to enter this market will have to in-license the technology from Roche.
For the time being, however, no new market entrants are expected and Roche is poised to maintain its leadership position in the near term," says Frost and Sullivan analyst Alex Wong.
The Product Differentiation Innovation Award is, therefore, presented to Roche Diagnostics in acknowledgement of its proven ability to develop and advance products with more innovative capabilities than competing vendors/products.
The Leadership Award was awarded to Roche Diagnostics for having successfully leveraged its patented polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology into the 'gold standard' for nucleic acid amplification technology (Nat). "As the principle holder of the patents for the PCR technology, Roche Diagnostics earns royalties from all licensed competitors marketing PCR-based products, including kits and consumables.
As a result, Roche participates significantly in both clinical and research markets," explains Wong.
"We remain deeply committed to developing innovative molecular-based diagnostics tests and PCR automated testing platforms," stated Heiner Dreismann, head of Roche Molecular Systens, the Roche Diagnostics business area which has made PCR the leading nucleic acid amplification technology in the world.
The company today is market leader in the European clinical diagnostic kit market.
Based on its proprietary technology, Roche is poised to maintain its lead in the European nucleic acid-based amplification kits market, forecast to be worth over $575 million by 2006.
It is the only participant in the clinical nucleic acid-based kits market with a comprehensive portfolio that spans over six principal virus- and bacteria- borne diseases found in western Europe, with Human Papillomavirus (HPV) being the most recent addition to its armoury.
"In addition to the qualitative products, Roche leads the way in the quantitation market, whereby its outstanding Amplicor range of monitoring assays for HIV, HCV, and HBV has permitted the surveillance and prognosis of these viral diseases," adds Mr Wong.
The Leadership Award, therefore, honours Roche Diagnostics for having been at the frontline of market and technology developments as well as for having consistently outperformed its competitors in terms of market share and revenue growth rate.
