Medtronic, University of Minnesota Team Up to Tackle Healthcare Challenges

The University of Minnesota and Medtronic have signed a new strategic collaboration agreement to address “meaningful and difficult healthcare challenges,” and rapidly advance lab discoveries that can improve and save patients’ lives.

University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham and Medtronic CEO Geoff Martha and a number of leaders from both organizations attended the ceremonial signing event. Medtronic Senior Vice President and Chief Technology/Innovation Officer Ken Washington and UMN Vice President for Research and Innovation Shashank Priya signed the agreement.

“With this partnership, the University of Minnesota and Medtronic are reaffirming their shared commitment to improving quality of life through innovation,” Priya commented. “By addressing critical challenges in medtech, such as medical robotics, AI, and sustainability, this collaboration builds on decades of joint achievements. It embodies the pioneering spirit that has defined our relationship since the company’s founding. And I know our research community is excited by the access they will have to a huge range of real life problems that our researchers can try to address through their creativity.”

The relationship between both entities dates back to Medtronic’s establishment nearly 77 years ago. The company was founded in 1949 by Earl Bakken, a University of Minnesota educated electrical engineer, who collaborated with UMN heart surgeon C. Walton Lillehei, M.D., Ph.D., to create the first battery-powered, wearable pacemaker. Now, places such as the University’s Institute for Engineering in Medicine, including the Visible Heart Lab and Earl Bakken Medical Devices Center, continue this legacy of medtech innovation, advancing care and improving quality of life worldwide.

Medtronic has grown to become a Fortune 500 company that develops, manufactures, and sells medical devices and therapies, with more than 95,000 employees across 150 countries and more than 78 million patients treated worldwide. The company signed the new agreement in search of new and cutting-edge ideas for medical technologies aligned with its mission of alleviating pain, restoring health, and extending life.

“We are delighted and prepared to be a good partner here at the University of Minnesota, as we work collaboratively with industry to strengthen our academic and research ecosystem,” University President Rebecca Cunningham, herself a physician, stated. “As we move forward with plans to enhance our work in medtech and innovation, we will remain intensely focused on how we elevate our research enterprise and our Medical School to even greater heights.”

The University strives to build strategic collaborative partnerships through its Corporate Engagement Center that focus on technology and innovation, executive and employee engagement, talent development, visibility and branding, and place-based partnerships. The center promotes interdisciplinary team research for which the University was top-ranked among U.S. public institutions in a recent ranking from Times Higher Education and Schmidt Science Fellows program. The center works collaboratively with the University’s Technology Commercialization team, which regularly ranks among the top 20 public research universities for key tech transfer measures such as number of startups, deals, disclosures, and license income. The University ranks 17th in the world among universities for U.S. issued patents.

The partnership aligns with President Cunningham’s ideas for a Healthy Minnesota, and with the University’s upcoming biennial request to the Minnesota Legislature. It’s also relevant to Minnesota MedTech 3.0, a federally designated leading technology hub of more than 30 organizations, led by the Greater MSP Partnership, that aims to accelerate Minnesota’s global leadership in the medical technology industry.

“Minnesota MedTech 3.0 is all about building a medtech ecosystem that is more connected, more strategic and ‘smarter’ through the incorporation of cutting-edge technologies,” said Peter Frosch, president and CEO of the GreaterMSP Partnership. “This collaboration between two key technology players is going to help our region remain the epicenter of new innovation in medtech fields, and establish leadership in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science.”