ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Heart failure has come to the fore as an innovation and acquisition target for medical device companies at a time when the Heart Failure Society is working to create guidelines that support the use of devices in many groups of heart failure patients. The challenge remains: characterizing patients and understanding the best approach for them.
What’s the biggest unmet need in cardiovascular disease? Heart failure, at least from the perspective of medical device company representatives who spoke on the panel “New Opportunities and Directions in Cardiovascular Medical Devices,” which took place in April at the MedTech Strategist Innovation Summit in Dublin. Executives from Edwards Lifesciences, Johnson & Johnson, and Medtronic agreed that many patients with heart failure don’t yet have access to the right therapy, because the disease is complicated in ways that we’re only beginning to address.
Bruce Rosengard, MD, vice president and global lead for medtech for Johnson & Johnson’s External Innovation group (and a cardiac surgeon), noted that, to begin with, “It’s not one disease. It’s really a syndrome, and in fact, heart failure is the end state of every form ofcardiac disease: valvular disease, coronary disease, congenital disease, infectious disease, inflammatory disease, arrhythmic disease. All of them can lead to heart failure.”
