Medical Engineering Seminar

With more than 50,000 employees, Medtronic operates in 140 countries, $17 billion in revenue, delivering medical products to more than 10 million people each year. Innovation must continue while delivering effective products at lower cost. The challenge of developing medical devices for the more than 4 billion people who today have no access to care is immediate.

The incorporation of low power and flexible microelectronics into implantable medical devices has substantially broadened applications for these devices while allowing for less invasive delivery and reduced complications. Cardiac pacemakers have been reduced in dimension by magnitudes; the potential to deliver a wafer scale pacemaker will soon be realized. Implantable and wearable physiologic sensors will facilitate remote management of the devices and the patients who use them. Convergence of information and communication technologies into medical devices will catalyze Medtronic's vision to distribute health care to billions of patients who have minimal access to affordable care. Chronic diseases such as heart failure, diabetes and hypertension can be better managed with implanted and wearable microelectronics and adaptive closed loop algorithms.

It all starts with imagination and engineers.