Sleep Review interviews Michael J. Farrell, vice president of marketing for ResMed, San Diego.

Inside Track

 )Michael J. Farrell, vice president of marketing for ResMed Corp.

Last November, Sleep Review spoke to Michael J. Farrell, vice president of marketing for ResMed, San Diego, about the company’s positioning of the new VPAP Adapt SV™. This month, we followed up with Farrell to get the status on the success of the VPAP Adapt SV launch and to ask him about the results of a recent study by the investment group Wachovia Securities that found positive results for ResMed.

SR: The December 2005 Sleep Center Survey by Wachovia Securities stated that ResMed currently has a 41% share of the US mask market—a number-one market position. How did you achieve this leadership position, and how can you sustain it?

Farrell: ResMed has always had a focus on the patient and making sure our masks are not only effective, but also comfortable. We spend our time listening to sleep physicians, sleep technicians, home medical equipment [providers], and patients to understand their needs. Our goal is a first-time fit with a ResMed mask or nasal pillow that the patient finds comfortable every time. This saves the sleep center and home care provider time and effort, and it also ensures that their patient is effectively introduced to therapy. The goal is to ensure that they will be compliant with a compact and efficacious product. The only way we will maintain our number-one market position in the mask segment is to keep listening to our customers and developing patient interface technology that meets their current and future needs. I am confident that our ResMed team will achieve this goal with lasting results.

SR: Last November you told “Inside Track” about a new product ResMed was launching early in 2006: VPAP Adapt SV™, an adaptive servo-ventilator for central sleep apnea and periodic breathing. How has the initial market release gone, and how have the first patients responded to Adapt SV therapy?

Farrell: The first patients went on the Adapt SV after its market release during February 2006: the results have been extraordinarily successful. Sleep physicians intently watching their first patients at their sleep centers have been amazed as they observed elimination of Cheyne-Stokes respiration and normalization of PSG montage readings live. One of the initial sleep center case studies showed a patient with an apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) of around 120, with a spectrum of central, mixed, and obstructive events. Standard positive airway pressure treatment was able to lower the AHI by approximately 10% to 15%. However, the Adapt SV was able to eliminate all central and mixed apneas and lower the AHI by more than 95%, including normalization of periodic breathing patterns. We look forward to working with clinicians who utilize unique features of our VPAP III ST bilevel devices (V-synch triggering, 50 ms rise-time adjustment increments, Tmin and Tmax inspiratory time settings). Together, we will take US home care ventilation to the next level.