Abbott’s range of entries to Fast Company’s 2o20 World Changing Ideas Awards made it our selection for World Changing Company of the Year. While the company is currently a major player in helping ramp up the testing capacity for COVID-19, its entries included doing work on fighting malaria, advancing the careers of underrepresented people in STEM, and the creation of a new implant for babies’ hearts—the Amplatzer Piccolo Occluder.
The Amplatzer Piccolo Occluder is a big solution for very small patients. It’s used to treat premature newborns with a heart defect known as patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), a congenital condition that affects some 12,000 U.S. newborns a year.
The FDA-approved Piccolo offers another option: A tiny device, about the size of a pea, is delivered via catheter through an artery in the baby’s leg and up to the heart. Once positioned, the occluder creates a dam that corrects blood flow almost immediately. Abbott’s global director of marketing, Wim Stegink, reports that “some of the babies we’ve treated get off ventilators days after the procedure.”