Medical Products and Devices: Irrimax Exemplifies M&A Opportunity

Medical products and devices are essential to the healthcare system, playing critical roles in many different types of care. Here, senior professionals from our Healthcare & Life Sciences Group discuss Irrimax, a leading infection control specialist and an example of the sector’s potential for innovative businesses and their investors.

Growing Market, Essential Solutions

The global medical products and devices market is broad and growing, driven by major demographic shifts, increasing access to healthcare, and a supportive regulatory environment. More specifically, the aging global population fuels rising patient volumes and longer average lengths of stay, while regulators across geographies are pushing for better patient care, as are payers focused on value-based care.

Better medical products and devices play a key role in meeting the growing need for care and improving patient outcomes, and, as such, are seeing increasing interest from M&A investors. For example, businesses providing consumables like those used in pressure injury prevention attract buyers with a combination of reoccurring demand and proven efficacy against high-cost medical events.

Likewise, infection control is one of the toughest challenges for hospitals to solve, creating a significant burden on the system and costing the U.S. healthcare system $20 billion annually.i Innovations that can reduce hospital-acquired infections are highly sought after to improve outcomes for patients and reduce financial pressures on the hospital system.

Irrimax specializes in this endeavor and has been integral in providing an alternative to traditional wound irrigation solutions to help prevent surgical site infection. Since the introduction of its flagship product, Irrisept 450, the company has seen widespread physician adoption across surgical specialties.

Irrisept fulfills a critical wound irrigation role for intraoperative infection prevention and other clinical applications. It is a single-use medical device providing low pressure irrigation. Its superior performance stems from the combination of mechanical action and the use of chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) to inhibit microbial growth.

The Irrimax value proposition has multiple traits investors seek. For one thing, physicians prefer to use Irrisept because it is easy to use, has extensive safety testing data, and has demonstrated effectiveness against bacteria and viruses. In addition to this loyal user base, the product has defensible differentiation: Irrimax has patented the intellectual property for CHG use in the body. And because Irrisept is single-use and has a relatively low price compared to the cost of a negative event, it drives strong recurring revenue. Irrimax also has a robust commercial model that accelerates new product innovation.

Tyler Bradshaw, a managing director in our Healthcare & Life Sciences Group, says that Irrimax effectively redefined its market by introducing such a disruptive product. “Irrimax is disrupting the legacy standards of care in operating rooms across the country,” says Bradshaw. “It can now augment its breadth and depth across a wide portfolio, expanding into new surgical applications as well as areas like trauma, burns, or chronic wound care.”

An Opportunity to Create Value

Irrimax exemplifies the opportunity for M&A investors to participate in the growth potential and steady demand offered by the medical products and devices sector. The entire space benefits from favorable demographic and regulatory tailwinds, while products that cost-effectively improve quality of care are highly sought after by healthcare systems.

There’s also significant room for sponsors to add value to promising businesses in the sector. “Small and medium-sized companies with the potential to increase market penetration and broaden their portfolio are an ideal match for investors, as both traits are attractive levers for growth,” says Cheairs Porter, a managing director in our Healthcare & Life Sciences Group. “With the right expertise, investors can help these companies expand their product offerings to solve more patient issues, serve adjacent areas, and capture share.”

In addition, Bradshaw notes opportunities for investors to help medical products and devices companies create more effective direct and indirect sales programs and to secure more group purchasing organization contracts to further penetrate key channels.

In sum, as forward-leaning companies continue to innovate within their targeted areas of care—from pressure injury prevention to infection control to countless other healthcare challenges—they create potential for M&A investors to accelerate growth, bolster differentiation, and generate substantial long-term value.

To discuss the M&A potential in medical products and devices, please contact our senior professionals.

1. Journal of Emergency Nursing