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Illustration: Gabriella Turrisi/Axios

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The joint venture announced last week by Medtronic and DaVita is an effort to create new kidney failure therapies — including, most notably for us, at-home tools.

Why it matters: The deal underscores the renewed importance of kidney care at a time when people with comorbidities, including kidney disease, face an increased risk of serious complications from COVID. (ICYMI, the first pair of U.S. deaths from the virus were patients at an outpatient dialysis clinic.)

Context: The JV follows news of several other high-profile deals in the kidney care space, including…

• A triple-play merger announced in March between Fresenius Medical Care, InterWell Health and Cricket Health.
• A January announcement that Chamath Palihapitiya’s SPAC, Suvretta Capital, would merge with medical device company ProKidney LP.
• A partnership struck this month between Ohio-based Bon Secours Mercy Health and Denver-based Strive Health to make Strive’s tech platform and clinical care teams available to the health system’s providers.

Details: “NewCo” (it doesn’t have a name yet) will be co-owned by Medtronic and DaVita and led by an independent management team.

• DaVita will make a cash payment to Medtronic, as well as non-cash assets to NewCo plus contingent payments based on milestones worth $400 million to Medtronic, per the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.
• Medtronic is contributing its renal-related assets to the venture, including its current product portfolio, pipeline and R&D, and Ven Manda, president of Medtronic’s renal care solutions business, will become its CEO.

The intrigue: With the home-based care sector heating up like never before, it will be interesting to see what the two giants develop in terms of remote dialysis products.

🗯️ Our thought bubble: Based on what we’ve seen from other recently announced unnamed joint ventures, there’s no such thing as a 50-50 deal. Either DaVita or Medtronic initiated this, and one likely has an upper hand here.

Source: https://www.axios.com/pro/health-tech-deals/newsletters/2022/05/31/health-tech-kidney-care-jv