Products and Markets

Social impact is intrinsic to our business. Every four seconds a Medtronic product saves or substantially improves the life of someone, somewhere in the world.

Our pacemakers, implanted cardioverter defibrillators, heart valves and stents, diabetes pumps, spinal therapies, and neurostimulators for pain and movement improve the quality of life for millions of patients. Likewise, our pioneering minimally-invasive therapies have the potential to shorten recovery times and get people back to normal life faster and with less discomfort.

For example, our Melody® transcatheter pulmonary valve allows surgeons to replace a failed pulmonary valve through a catheter inserted into a small incision in the groin rather than through complex open-heart surgery.

Our remote monitoring products are reducing healthcare costs by allowing patients to schedule fewer in-clinic visits while still providing physicians with the ability to identify and treat medical conditions before they require hospitalization. The recent introduction of Medtronic’s M-Link™ cellular accessory increases the number of patients who can benefit from remote monitoring. (See case study below.)

Medtronic’s MRI-conditional cardiac pacemakers, now available in Europe and under review in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration, are the world’s first and allow implantable device patients access to potentially life-saving MRI diagnostics. Our navigation and intra-operative imaging products enhance surgical performance and improve patient outcomes by providing surgeons with real-time feedback on patient anatomy, instrument position and therapy placement.

And, we continue to push the boundaries of innovative care. Medtronic engineers currently are working on ground-breaking therapies such as leadless pacemakers that offer less-invasive implantation techniques, disposable insulin pumps with the potential to serve patients with lower incomes, and drug-delivery breakthroughs for treating Alzheimer’s disease.

We also actively research the application of existing technologies to new disease conditions in order to reach untreated or undertreated patients. For example, our neurostimulators, currently approved for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders as well as obsessive-compulsive disorder (humanitarian use), are currently being tested to treat epilepsy and depression. Similarly, we are investigating our infusion pumps for treating cardiac and infectious diseases.