Saturday January 5, 2013
Who will be the next Medtronic? What will be Minnesota's next breakthrough industry? James Walsh will provide the latest information and commentary on the people, companies and trends driving innovation in Minnesota. From visionary entrepreneurs to game changing technologies, this blog offers a window into the future of Minnesota's economy.
Posts about Minnesota newsmakers
A new face at Med-Tech Institute
Posted by: Updated: October 27, 2011 - 2:42 PM
Med-tech veteran Dr. Susan Alpert has been named Executive in Residence of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute (MILI) at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.
You’ll recall Alpert recently retired from Medtronic, where she was a senior vice president and chief regulatory officer since 2005. Before that, she held a variety of positions at the FDA, including director of the Office of Device Evaluation. She’s a microbiologist and a pediatrician by training.
Professor Stephen Parente, who also serves as MILI’s director, said in a news release that Alpert will be involved in many activities, including teaching, interacting with the university and business communities, advising and generating ideas “to help further the mission of MILI."
Alpert has been involved with the Institute for more than five years, and is one of its founding members of MILI’s National Industry Council.
Janet Moore covers medical technology for the Star Tribune.
More from Omar
Posted by: Updated: October 19, 2011 - 1:08 PMWe interviewed Medtronic's new chairman and CEO Omar Ishrak earlier this week, but couldn't fit everything in the story. Here are the outtakes.
Ishrak discusses, the FDA, growing up in Bangladesh, and his career at GE.
Janet Moore covers medical technology for the Star Tribune.
More drama in legal tussle involving 3M
Posted by: Updated: October 7, 2011 - 4:49 PMThe bitter legal tussle between 3M and investors and lawyers involved with a failed acquisition took an unusual turn on Thursday.
First, a bit of background.
The $27 billion Maplewood-based conglomerate was sued in the United Kingdom by a group of investors called Porton Capital Inc. and a subsidiary of the British Defense Ministry. They claimed 3M failed to aggressively market their homegrown technology, called BacLite, which detects potentially deadly superbugs in hospitals.
The initial pricetag in the deal was $16 million with potential earn out-payments of up to $69 million.
A few years later, 3M shut the business down, saying the BacLite technology was a bust.
Last May, Porton representatives, including Washington lawyer Lanny J. Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton, and Twin Cities attorney, Robert Hopper, held a press conference in Minneapolis to discuss the issue. Porton also launched a website, organized demonstrations and issued several news releases protesting 3M’s decision to shelf BacLite. They called on the Food and Drug Administration to investigate the matter.
In short, they said a potentially life-saving technology was unceremoniously ditched by 3M.
3M responded in June by filing a federal lawsuit, first in New York, then later refiled in the District of Columbia, against Porton CEO Harvey Boulter and Davis. The complaint alleges they engaged in defamation, conspiracy and blackmail in an effort to extract millions from the company. They also alleged that Porton’s public relations campaign was intended to embarrass Sir George Buckley, 3M’s British-born CEO, who was recently knighted by Queen Elizabeth.
On Thursday, Davis filed an “anti-SLAPP” motion in the District of Columbia suit, claiming the company has attempted to thwart his right to speak on “an important public health matter by filing a tactical lawsuit” against him.
SLAPP is short for “strategic lawsuit against public participation” — that is, a suit intended to censor, intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with huge legal costs, at least until they give up the fight.
In a statement, 3M lawyer William A. Brewer III said, “Our client views this as another desperate attempt to deflect from the merits of the lawsuit it filed against Mr. Davis. Needless to say, we understand completely why Mr. Davis will make any and all attempts to avoid having his conduct and that of his clients scrutinized. We think that this, together with the other actions he has made, will be unavailing.”
Janet Moore covers medical technology for the Star Tribune.
Ex-Medtronic CEO has a new job
Posted by: Updated: October 6, 2011 - 9:14 AMWilliam Hawkins, the former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic, has a new job.
He’s the CEO of Immucor Inc., an Atlanta-based company that sells systems that detect cell and serum components of blood prior to transfusion. The transition will be effective Oct. 17.
Hawkins, 57, left Medtronic last spring after Omar Ishrak was named CEO of the Fridley-based med-tech giant.
Privately held Immucor is owned by TPG Capital.
Janet Moore covers medical technology for the Star Tribune.
Devices give runners a new kind of normal
Posted by: Updated: September 30, 2011 - 9:13 AMEvery year, I wander down to Summit Avenue from my house in St. Paul — cowbell in hand — to watch the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon from about the 22-mile mark. It’s an awe-inspiring sight seeing the mass of runners soldier up that hill (trust me, there is one!) on the Capitol city’s signature boulevard. So many runners, so many stories, each inspiring in their own way.
This year, Fridley-based Medtronic has honored 25 long-distance runners who have benefitted from some type of medical technology as their “Global Heroes.” They come from 10 different countries, but for the purposes of this blog post, I sought out the three who hail from our fair region.
Ania (pronounced ON-YA) Ritter is a 37-year-old mother of two small children from Minneapolis who will be running in the marathon. She has a pacemaker to treat a heart condition called syncope, which meant that she could have fainted whenever she exercised. “This isn’t the kind of fainting you’d read about in a Victorian romance novel,” she laughs. Her heart would actually stop beating.
Though a lifelong runner, she was terrified to leave the house for a run.
After being implanted with a pacemaker in 2001, she says she “no longer lives in fear.” And she’s excited (truly!) to run in her fifth marathon: “It’s going to be a great day.”
Two others from the region will be participating in the 10-mile portion of the event.
That includes Heidi Owen, a 31-year-old nurse at the Mayo Clinic who suffered from cardiac arrest when she was just 24. Newly engaged at the time, she collapsed outside of a hospital in Albert Lea, and her sister had to perform CPR. “It wasn’t looking good at that point,” she says.
Owen was diagnosed with a condition called Long QT Syndrome, a heart rhythm disorder that can cause fast, chaotic heartbeats. In 2004, she was treated with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) — a stopwatch-sized device that will shock her heart back into rhythm, if needed. Owen says the device gives her tremendous peace-of-mind, particularly while running. A high school and college athlete, she has run two marathons and two half-marathons since receiving her device.
After Sunday, she plans to train for a triathlon. Her ICD, she says, “helped me to be normal again.”
Finally, it was a hoot interviewing Gary Pauley, a 48-year-old resident of Parker, S.D., who has been treated with a deep brain stimulator for symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease. The pacemaker-like device is implanted in the chest and connected to the brain with two leads or wires that deliver electrical pulses to treat the telltales symptoms of the disease. Your humble blogger has seen this surgery and it is no small feat.
When diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2009, “it was a real kick in the shorts,” Pauley says. Prior to receiving the device, he says his hands shook so badly he couldn’t recognize his own signature, or put on a pair of pants while standing up. That largely changed with the implant of the stimulator. “It didn’t fix everything, but [the symptoms] are barely noticeable.”
Most importantly, he could run again. An enthusiastic athlete, Pauley really took to running after enlisting in the Army more than 20 years ago. “I was a sprinter in high school and a couch potato in college. In the Army, they made me run a mile the first week and I swear they could have clocked me with a sundial.”
Pauley improved over the years, and five months after his surgery to implant the stimulator, he ran a half-marathon. Next on his “physical bucket list:” A triathlon. Only, at age 48, he had to first learn how to swim. “That’s going great,” he reports.
The stimulator doesn’t cure Parkinson’s, but it helped Pauley live his life as an supervisor at an insurance company and the father of two boys. “I was afraid I was going to be a 40-year-old who could no longer work or run — a fat, bald person who sat in the house a lot.”
Even knee surgery seven weeks ago won’t stop him from the 10-miler on Sunday. “No problem,” he says.
Janet Moore covers medical technology for the Star Tribune.
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