New Medtronic partnership to help tackle difficult healthcare challenges

Medtronic–University collaboration seeks to draw on both organizations’ strengths
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (12/20/2024) — The University of Minnesota and Medtronic recently signed a new strategic collaboration agreement aimed at building an even more deliberate and productive relationship between the two organizations.
The Medtronic–University of Minnesota partnership seeks to draw on both organizations’ strengths to address meaningful and difficult healthcare challenges, and rapidly advance discoveries from the lab to demonstrate innovations that are life-saving and contribute to people’s health around the globe.
University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham and Medtronic CEO Geoff Martha and a number of leaders from both organizations, including University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering Dean Andrew Alleyne, were on hand for the event. Medtronic Senior Vice President and Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Ken Washington and University of Minnesota Vice President for Research and Innovation Shashank Priya signed the agreement.

Medtronic was founded by Earl Bakken, an electrical engineer educated in the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering. After graduating, Bakken collaborated with University of Minnesota heart surgeon C. Walton Lillehei, M.D., Ph.D., to create the first battery-powered, wearable pacemaker in 1949. Today, 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 gone on to become a well-known Fortune 500 company and the largest medical device company in the world with more than 95,000 employees across 150 countries and more than 78 million patients treated around the world. 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.
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.
“With this partnership, the University of Minnesota and Medtronic are reaffirming their shared commitment to improving quality of life through innovation,” said University of Minnesota Vice President Shashank Priya. “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.”
Learn more about the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering’s contributions to MedTech research in the latest issue of the Inventing Tomorrow magazine.