Micro Interventional Devices: Creating A Tool Box For Structural Heart Disease

In his 30-year medical device career, Michael Whitman has been involved with several disruptive technologies that have changed the practice of medicine. In 1995 Whitman was working at Johnson & Johnson Interventional Systems Co., the developer and manufacturer of the first coronary stent, when J&J acquired Cordis Corp.[See Deal] and became the market leader in percutaneous coronary intervention. He subsequently founded Power Medical Interventions (PMI), to help advance the evolution of minimally invasive general surgery by developing intelligent surgical instruments to make it easier to do laparoscopic surgeries, including single-port laparoscopy and NOTES (natural orifice transluminal endoscopy.) According to Whitman, “Whenever there is a disruptive or transformative technology, there is often a need to create peripheral devices around it to support it.” He points out that when stents were launched, stent delivery systems had to be improved, and ultimately the stents themselves improved, transforming into drug-eluting stents. Whitman has spent his career working to fill these kinds of gaps. In 2009, after Covidien Ltd. bought Power Medical Interventions, he was looking for the next disruptive opportunity and decided the time was right to create an enabling platform around structural heart disease. [See Deal]

Two years earlier, the first transcatheter aortic valve, Sapien (from Edwards Lifesciences Corp.), had been launched in Europe, and it was closely followed by the CoreValve from Medtronic...