Products and Markets

Fulfilling our Mission to alleviate pain, restore health and extend life, we continue to drive innovation in therapies and healthcare delivery through collaborative partnerships, product development and pilots of new business models in developing countries.

Drug Delivery Systems

During fiscal year 2011, Medtronic embarked on joint collaborations with Eli Lilly & Company and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to develop treatments for Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases, respectively. Both projects involve engineering implantable pump and catheter systems that enable drug delivery to a targeted area of the brain, thereby circumventing the blood-brain barrier that currently restricts drug therapy for these diseases.

While development and testing of these therapies will take several years, potential applications include the treatment of Alzheimer’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) and other brain-based diseases.

Mobile Health Solutions

Medtronic is also collaborating with Ford Motor Company and WellDoc, Inc., a developer of software-based health management tools, to research the integration of medical technologies with the Ford Sync in-car connectivity system. Ford has created a prototype that uses mobile health apps to monitor conditions like congestive heart failure and diabetes and display and transmit alerts if a driver is in danger. For example, the mobile health solution would use Medtronic glucose monitoring technology to record a diabetic’s glucose levels and share the data via Sync to a dashboard screen or audio system, as well as the driver’s personalized WellDoc database. Such monitoring would allow drivers to avoid lightheadedness, blurry vision or other symptoms that may be dangerous while driving.

Healthy Heart for All India

A Medtronic initiative piloted in several cities across, India, Healthy Heart for All successfully increased patient access to cardiac therapies. Public awareness campaigns guided individuals toward several entry points to the Healthy Heart for All care network, which included health hotlines, patient counselors, heart screenings and other outreach activities. In addition, the Healthy Heart for All team worked closely with partner hospitals to develop a tiered service offering and financing programs that improve affordability.

Device implants to treat cardiac rhythm disease and cardiovascular conditions increased more than 100 percent during the pilot period, which started in September 2010. Medtronic plans to rollout the initiative to other locations in India during fiscal year 2012.

Beijing Patient Care Center

Access to information on medical technology is a major challenge in China, where more than 260 million people suffer from chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease. In large cities, patients with a chronic disease have an average of 20 minutes to discuss treatment options with a physician during their first visit to the hospital¹.

To address this issue, Medtronic opened a hands-on Patient Care Center in Beijing to educate patients, physicians and caregivers on our latest cardiovascular therapies. Operated in cooperation with China’s National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases, the center provides a wide range of materials, from interactive videos to three-dimensional heart models, which help patients make informed decisions regarding their treatment.

¹Based on a 2010 Livingston Market Consultants sample survey of patients in Beijing.