Leveraging Minnesota’s Health Care Talent
The invitation encouraged dressing in plaid—in honor of Medtronic founder Earl Bakken, who famously wore a tartan jacket for his company’s annual holiday program. I’ve heard that in those early years, Bakken actually read Christmas stories to employees.
As Medtronic has grown, so, too, has its holiday program. I was one of a few journalists invited to the 64th annual event at its Fridley headquarters in early December. The soaring atrium was filled with researchers, staff, and executives flown in from around the world. The stage setup rivaled that of a news station, with multiple cameras, teleprompters and giant screens broadcasting live feeds from Medtronic offices across the globe. Chairman and CEO Geoff Martha, who joked that he evaluates each year based on how easily he can fit into his plaid sport coat, seamlessly shifted into talk show mode. He interviewed people who have recovered from injury or disease with the help of a Medtronic product—a pacemaker, a suturing device, a robotic assisted surgery. There were tears, there was awe. You could see the pride on employees’ faces. Sure, this was a highly produced infomercial, but it’s hard not to be inspired when you connect innovation with the humans it benefits.
We need more of this, and not just at internal company meetings. Martha knows it, which is why he’s leading the charge to secure a federal “tech hub” designation for Minnesota that would bring dollars and national attention (read all about it “Minnesota’s Campaign for Medtech Prominence”).
And it’s why Twin Cities Business is doing something different this issue. Rather than bringing you the usual wide-ranging business news, we’re going all-in on the business of one of the most important industries in the region: health care. We’ve delved into some of the questions that keep surfacing in our editorial meetings—everything from hospital finances to the costs of health benefits to burnout among health care workers. We leveraged the expertise of many talented individuals working on these and other critical health matters in our community. You’ll see some of their names throughout these pages; there are many others who were equally generous with their insights and connections behind the scenes, like Jodi Hubler, Deb Hopp, Frank Jaskulke, April Prunty, and Eric Hoag. We’re also privileged to get a firsthand account of the work coming out of the Governor’s Task Force on Academic Health at the University of Minnesota from committee member (and TCB owner) Vance Opperman in his Open Letter.
Along with taking the pulse of Minnesota’s large health care organizations and speaking to their leaders about their priorities and concerns, we’ve been talking to many medtech entrepreneurs who see new possibilities and believe that this is the state to make it happen—if they can get more support.
“The Minnesota ecosystem has an amazing mix of entrepreneurs, large strategics, big health plans, amazing health care systems. To have that all in one state is phenomenal,” says Morgan Evans, serial medtech founder and investor who’s on our cover (“Medtech’s Next Gen”). “We need more early-stage funding and better connectivity so we can propel great innovations to market faster.”
Dr. Johnathon Aho is a surgeon and founder of Pneumeric, maker of the Capnospot, a device to treat collapsed lungs with more precision than the current standard in ERs and ambulances. The research and product development may actually have been the easy part; Aho says it’s the fundraising, marketing, hiring, and approval process that are really putting him to the test. “It’s exhausting,” he confessed, talking while he was on call at the Sanford Clinic in Luverne, Minn. I asked Aho what he’d change if he were in charge of all aspects of the innovation process. He said he’d create a consortium of Minnesota’s hospital systems to get more ideas funded, with a focus on patient benefit rather than the biggest returns. “Pneumeric isn’t going to be a billion-dollar market cap, but we might be a $100 million company,” Aho says. “Smaller companies don’t offer the big payoff for VCs, but they’re often the sure bets that create consistency.”
Brad Larmie echoed a similar concern. He’s the new executive director at St. Paul’s University Enterprise Labs, where there’s a waiting list of 25 life sciences-related startups in need of lab space. In Minnesota, he says, “We’re really good at science. We’re really good at growing big organizations. We need to create a stronger bridge between the people who have done it well and those who are trying to figure it out.”
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Here’s hoping this issue can serve as a bridge builder. We welcome your ideas.
