Medical Devices Today

Leaving Medtronic: Bill Hawkins' Legacy

Article preview from IN VIVO - May 1, 2011

Prominently displayed in Bill Hawkins' office is a sword – a Viking sword, Hawkins points out -- a gift from Art Collins, the man who preceded Hawkins as CEO of Medtronic Inc. The gift was designed symbolically to help Hawkins "cut through the bureaucratic red tape" and "deal with the intense competitive environment." But for Hawkins, the sword had a different resonance – a kind of talisman of biomedical engineering.

Proving Device Incubation Works: An Interview with The Foundry

Article preview from IN VIVO - April 01, 2011

A decade ago, incuabators were seen as the best medicine for what then ailed the medical device industry, most notably a complex regulatory pathway and a difficult venture financing climate. Perhaps not surprisingly, as both the regulatory path and venture financing grew easier in the mid 2000s, incubators began to struggle, victims of their own financing problems. More recently, two huge acquisitions, Abbott's purchase of Evalve and Medtronic's of Ardian, suggest that at least one incubator, The Foundry, is proving that incubation works.

Covidien - Back on Top: An Interview with Richard Meelia

Article preview from In-Vivo - September, 2010

Is there a medical device company today doing better than Covidien? The company is making a huge splash building new businesses and shoring up existing ones. But Covidien, formerly Tyco, hasn't always had it so good. A corporate scandal in the early 2000s brought Tyco's corporate management down and scuttled the healthcare business' strategic plan. After years of sitting on the sidelines, Covidien is back, stronger than ever.

Raising Robotics: An Interview with Intuitive's Lonnie Smith

Article preview from IN VIVO - July, 2010

The tremendous success of Intuitive Surgical over the past two decades seems clearly to argue that robotics is more than a techy's pipedream. Intuitive has already revolutionized at least one procedure - laparoscopic prostatectomy - and it figures to make significant progress in a range of others, in men's health, women's health, and cardiovascular surgery, to name just a few relevant clinical spaces. Even more impressive has been its success as a publicly traded company; for much of the middle years of this decade, Intuitive's stock was the strongest performer among all medical device public offerings. And perhaps most interesting: until recently, Intuitive was virtually the only robotics company to achieve any kind of success at all. In Vivo interviews Lonnie Smith, the CEO of the company for much of the 1990s and 2000s, to whom much of the credit should go.

GE Healthcare: Exclusive Interview With New CEO John Dineen

Full interview reprinted from "The Gray Sheet" - July 28, 2008

While it seems like a big change, John Dineen suggests his recent move from chief exec of General Electric's locomotive and drilling equipment business to the top slot at the firm's healthcare unit is a natural transition. Find out what he has to say.

From Guidant to Abbott: An Interview with John Capek

In the battle between Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific for Guidant, some people argue the real winner was Abbott Laboratories. John Capek looks back on his days at Guidant and ahead to his new role running Abbott's medical device business.