Sitting over a PowerPoint presentation, Stephen Oesterle, MD, senior vice president, medicine and technology, for Medtronic PLC, goes through a long list of the major medical device technologies that make up Medtronic’s portfolio, perhaps the broadest in the industry. “Where do you think the first implantable pacemaker came from?” he asks and, answering his own question, says “A physician in Sweden.” The first dual chamber pacemaker? Germany. Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT)? France. ICDs? Poland.
And it’s not just CRDM (Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management) devices. Everyone knows that the first interventional cardiology procedures came, famously,...
