MINNEAPOLIS — Seventy-five years ago, Medtronic, the world’s largest medical device company, was born. It was created in a garage in Minneapolis by two men who would go on to invent the pacemaker.
That device, according to today’s CEO, Geoff Martha, not only put Medtronic on the map, it kickstarted the entire medical technology industry. And Minnesota, he says, is now the world’s premier medtech hub.
As transformational as the pacemaker was, Martha believes a new Medtronic procedure, just approved by the FDA, will be even bigger.
It's called The Symplicity Spyral program and it treats high blood pressure — in some cases, without drugs. In the outpatient procedure, a doctor inserts a metal tube near the kidneys and uses radio frequency energy to deaden the renal nerves, which lowers blood pressure.
“It's, like, an hour-long procedure,” Martha says, “with mild sedation and really no pain.”
Patients are seeing double-digit decreases in blood pressure, which Martha says is massive.
“You know, just three or four points will reduce your risk of heart attack or stroke by 20 to 30 percent. I mean, these are big movements," he said.
When you consider that 30 percent of adults worldwide have high blood pressure, you can understand why Martha is so confident in Symplicity’s potential.
“Well, look, we're saying it's a, you know, $100 billion market opportunity and, just 1% penetration is $1 billion of revenue for us.”
Martha cites other promising new procedures from Medtronic that treat everything from atrial fibrillation, a common problem in older people, to another common disease, diabetes.
Their new continuous glucose monitor, he says, is getting very close to mimicking a healthy pancreas. It’s keeping patients’ blood sugar in a healthy range more than 90 percent of the time.
All these advancements, Martha argues, aren’t just good for the company, they’re good for the entire state, attracting talent to Minnesota and driving economic growth.
As for Medtronic, it started 75 years ago with just two employees. It now employs 95,000 around the world — 10,000 of them right here in Minnesota.
As impressive as that is, Martha believes the medtech industry is at an inflection point. With the introduction of artificial intelligence, enhanced computing, and robotics into the MedTech space, the innovation of the next 10 or 20 years, he says, will dwarf the last 75.
According to Martha, “Sky's the limit.”