Digital connectivity no longer belongs in the final slides of a medtech company’s pitch deck.
In the latest DeviceTalks Weekly podcast, three leaders pushing for connected medical devices explain the need to incorporate data collection and monitoring functionality in new devices.
Scott Huennekens, who advanced the “digital surgery” strategy when he helped launch Verb Surgical, says new medtech tools must be connected to provide maximum benefit.
“If you’re making a device, you have to understand and build into it how it will be connected for that episode of care as as well as how it fits into the continuum of care,” Huennekens said in an interview with the DeviceTalks Weekly Podcast. “It just has to be part of the way you’re thinking.”
Verb Surgical, of course, is now part of Johnson & Johnson’s surgical robot product line, Ottava, which the company unveiled last year.
In a separate interview on the podcast, Mark Toland, the former CEO of Corindus Vascular Robotics, says medtech companies moving into the surgical robotics space are advancing the model by building digital infrastructures around the surgical system. “Now they’re thinking about the data integration work, they’re thinking about how that translates into artificial intelligence over time,” he said.
Toland now has taken over the CEO role at Medical Micro Instruments, a Pisa, Italy-based startup developing a robotic surgical platform capable of enabling surgeons to perform more effective microsurgery.
Also in this podcast, Kal Patel, the CEO and co-founder of BrightInsight, shares the insight he’s bringing to medtech from his past posts in the pharma and healthcare delivery industries. He previously had been chief commercial officer for Doctor on Demand, a major telemedicine provider. Prior to that he founded and built Amgen’s digital health business unit.
Danielle Kirsh, senior editor of Mass Device, drops by to bring us up to date on two cool devices presented at CES 2021 — held virtually this year. You can read about Omron and Binah.ai here.
Finally, co-hosts Tom Salemi and Chris Newmarker walk through this week’s #NewmarkersNewsmakers featuring news from Abbott, Steris, Cantel and Theranos.
