Implantable medical electronics: Race to the bottom or race to the future?

Summary form only given: Implantable Medical Electronics have made tremendous strides improving the lives of millions of people over the last half century, yet realizing the full promise of this application to treat chronic disease across the globe in both developed and emerging markets has been limited by a number of constraints such as health care access, therapy delivery, total cost of care, system reliability, time and cost to prove clinical evidence, cultural attitudes towards chronic disease, and lack of information and innovation to address prevention of disease rather than just palliative care. New approaches for overcoming these constraints with innovation in ideas and application of technology can make meaningful impacts helping people worldwide live fuller lives with improved health care system outcomes in both cost and quality of care. This innovation is needed to create a better future for patients by engaging medical device makers, health care providers, reimbursement and regulatory bodies in a race to the future - a competitive landscape of innovative technologies that improve patient care, rather than a race to the bottom - a highly constrained, commodity device landscape with lowered incentives that slow innovation in the practice of medicine. Paul has served in his present role as Medtronic Tempe Campus Technology Director, since January 2008. In this role, he is responsible for technology development, design automation and product development for the New Therapies and Diagnostics organization within the Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management business unit of Medtronic. The Tempe campus technology organization includes over 90 personnel with competencies in developing and supporting next generation technologies and design environments for integrated circuits, electronic packaging and implantable sensors, brought together to enable system solutions across multiple business units of Medtronic. They are energized by the belief that there is still tremendou- - s opportunity for hardware solutions to contribute toward making a difference in improving the lives of people worldwide.