Edible Apple

A growing number of companies involved in the medical technology sphere are giving sales employees iPads in an effort to help bolster sales.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Abbott Laboratories, Medtronic Inc. and Boston Scientific Corp. are among the drug and medical-device firms making the move, while others say they are testing out the devices.

The tablet computers offer new ways to display product information or surgical-implant techniques, and help eliminate time wasted on issues that don’t drive sales, according to companies. Their quick start-up times mean the salesmen can jump into their presentations before doctors lose interest.

“[The iPad] enables our sales employees to do a much better job of engaging in a really different way than we’ve done before,” Mike Hedges, chief information officer of Medtronic, said in an interview.

The Journal notes that Medtronic, a Minneapolis-based manufacturer of implantable heart devices and the largest medical technology company int he world recently purchased 4,500 iPads to dole out to its sales and marketing team. That purchase alone makes Medtronic one of the largest corporate buyers of iPads, and that number may soon increase to 6,000 iPads.

Boston Scientific, meanwhile, also just ordered 2,000 iPads for its sales team even though the Massachusetts based company is in the midst of cost-cutting measures.

Explaining the purchase, Boston Scientific CEO Ray Elliot explained, “We’re beginning the process for our sales force of downloading more than 20 specific product apps and opportunity to get into pricing, time efficiency, expense reports, filling out requests and all the other things that we manage to do to take time away from the sales force.”

And so it would appear that the iPad continues to seep into all sorts of corporate spheres, from the finance industry to the medical technology industry.