OMRON Healthcare Co., Ltd (Head Office: Muko, Kyoto, Japan, President & CEO: Isao Ogino) has announced that cumulative global sales of home-use blood pressure monitors reached 300 million units[1]. It was 1973 when OMRON released its first electronic blood pressure monitor. And now, OMRON blood pressure monitors are available in more than 110 countries/regions across the world including the Philippines.
“We are celebrating this remarkable milestone by strengthening our commitment to serving our customers here in the Philippines even better. We are working hard on forging more partnerships and making our products more accessible so that OMRON can help more Filipino families in maintaining good heart health from home,” said Mr. Yusuke Kato, General Manager for OMRON Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd – Philippine Branch (Healthcare Division).
In the Philippines, for example, OMRON has collaborated with Philippine Society of Hypertension in educating Filipinos on how to prevent high blood pressure and heart disease by changing a healthy lifestyle and monitor blood pressure regularly at home.
Since the release of the first device, it took OMRON 36 years to achieve cumulative global sales of 100 million units in 2009. In the 2010s, people became more conscious of managing their own health, and at the same time, the number of patients with lifestyle-related diseases dramatically increased on a global scale. Just around the same time, the guidelines for home treatment of hypertension were officially established by leading medical societies, and a new behavioural pattern – monitoring blood pressure at home – became more popular. As a result, it took only 7 years to sell the next 100 million units. Ever since, OMRON has expanded across global markets consistently, accommodating the increasing demand of blood pressure monitors not only in America, China, and Europe, but also in developing countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, India and Brazil, and it took only 5 years for marking the 300 million-unit sales this year.
An estimated 1 billion adults worldwide have hypertension[2], and the number of individuals with cerebro-cardiovascular diseases caused by hypertension accounts for 17.5 million[3]. In the Philippines, the latest Preyson study released in 2021 by the Philippine Heart Association showed that the country has a progressive rise of high blood pressure among Filipinos, with the prevalence of hypertension climbing to 37 percent in 2021[4].Cerebro-cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death globally, and even when patients manage to survive after an event, there are still high risks for becoming bedridden or causing them to have serious side effects. Not only patients, but also their families can be impacted mentally and financially, and the level of their health-related quality of life (QOL) is jeopardized.
With the mission of “helping realize healthy and comfortable lives for people around the world”, OMRON Healthcare heralded its Going for ZERO vision (achieving zero cerebro-cardiovascular events) for its cardiovascular business in 2015, and has expanded the business domains focusing mainly on home blood pressure monitors. Now, taking this opportunity as a milestone for the new chapter, it will continue to identify the market demands and user needs, while responding to them swiftly with innovative solutions. Furthermore, the service business, such as the development of health-management apps for smartphones and a remote patient monitoring service will be accelerated. OMRON Healthcare will support both home health managements and healthcare professional’s patients treatment with its devices and services; helping to realize healthy and comfortable lives for people around the world.
Journey of OMRON Healthcare
In the 1970s, when measuring blood pressure had formerly been regarded as a medical procedure performed only by physicians and nurses, the first OMRON electronic blood pressure monitor was released. Since then, OMRON Healthcare has been devoting efforts to explore the easy-to-use and highly accurate blood pressure monitors and has introduced innovative devices including a wearable blood pressure monitor and an upper arm blood pressure monitor with EKG function into the market. More recently, OMRON has taken on the challenge of introducing the remote patient monitoring services on a global scale as part of the infrastructure in the New Normal, and developing AI technology to prevent the potential events of cardiovascular diseases.
Summary of the new 300M special website
To celebrate the milestone of the sales of 300 million blood pressure monitors, OMRON has launched a new global website. It talks about OMRON’s history and challenges along with its future vision and goal of achieving zero cerebro-cardiovascular events. The contents of the website include:
- Our journey (a history of home blood pressure monitors, measurement accuracy, design philosophy)
- Our challenge (Promotion of remote patient monitoring service globally, a development of AI technology for risk preventions, evolving blood pressure management, and the expansion of the business into a cerebro-cardiovascular domain)
- Academic research on blood pressure
You may access the website via: https://healthcare.omron.com/public/going-for-zero/300-million/
[1] Cumulative sales of home-use digital blood pressure monitors worldwide (as of May 2021)
[2] World Health Organization (WHO), World Health Day 2013: measure your blood pressure, reduce your risk
[3] WHO, World Health Report
[4] Philippine Heart Association, Presyon 4 (2021)
