Episode Transcript
Hello and welcome. I’m Kayleen Brown, Managing editor for DeviceTalks, and welcome to DeviceTalks Women in MedTech podcast. In this podcast, we try to reverse engineer the making of a MedTech leader. We’re also trying to understand how these MedTech leaders have gotten to the position that they’re in today and what lessons and insights that they can impart on us in the medical device product development cycle and ecosystem so that we can ultimately build better devices.
So for today’s episode, the kickoff to season two, it is no wonder, no surprise, that I am bringing in industry beloved Nina Goodheart, Senior Vice President of Structural Heart and Aortic at Medtronic. Nina is a dear friend of mine and has spent her career growing access to care and shaping strategy across MedTech and pharma. She’s a passionate advocate for health equity and women’s representation in MedTech. But suffice it to say, everything about Nina radiates empathy, empathy, empathy.
So when I reflected on our time together, it feels only natural to say that this episode centers on the role empathy plays in building a healthier MedTech ecosystem. So to talk more about that, I’d like to bring in my in studio guest, the recipient of the Make it Happen Award from Aptyx, my friend, and a female MedTech leader at Aptyx. Now, for those in the audience, I know you know, but Aptyx combines more than 70 years of manufacturing excellence into one global network united expertise in molding, extrusion, coating assembly.
So with that, Beth Harrison Meyer, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing for Aptyx, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you, Kayleen. I am so thrilled to be here.
Oh, nobody more than me, Beth. So for our audience, when I was unpacking season one and I thought, how could we continue to move needle forward for season two? The first phone call I made was to you, Beth. I said, can I borrow 15 minutes of your time? I so respect the way you see the industry and then your personal belief and Aptyx’s support of women in MedTech. So I feel like the Women in MedTech podcast and the Women in MedTech Breakfast really go hand in hand.
So thank you for supporting both of those initiatives. We honestly and sincerely cannot do it without you and the support of Aptyx. So thank you so much for that.
Well, thank you. It’s an honor and a privilege. And I can’t tell you how much I have personally been moved by the Women in MedTech events. And I hear the same thing from our team. I hear it from other women in the industry. I hear it from other men. In the industry, it is important. We’re all in this together to drive healthcare forward and it’s critical. We are very proud to be a part of it.
For our audience. If you’re not, if you don’t know. Aptyx is the founding sponsor of the Women in MedTech breakfast. A breakfast, now as part of all of our conferences. It’s about 90 minutes. We talk through a theme and we, after a keynote interview or a keynote panel, we talk through that, continue to talk through that theme in discussion groups. Why, Beth, was it important for you and Aptyx to be a founding sponsor for the Women in MedTech Breakfast?
It was just a perfect fit. Aptyx, while we have a lot of history that you mentioned, we are actually a new company and we’re building the culture. The most important thing when you think about culture is values. And there are a couple of ours that really make me think why this fits so well. One is growth mindset. So of course learn something new every day. But it’s also about respecting the experience, diversity and expertise that each one of us brings to the work we do for our customers.
And then collaborative partnership. It’s about communication, but more than that, it is about listening, speaking up and respecting one another. So when you think about those, they dovetail so well to what you have been building with the Women in MedTech breakfast and everything you’re doing with that platform.
Beth, you are more so than I think anybody listening even realizes, the embodiment of a MedTech leader. Can you tell us a bit more about your roles in MedTech that led you to your current leadership position at Aptyx?
Sure would love to. I’ve been in MedTech about 10 years, so actually less than half my career and kind of came in an interesting way. I had launched the first commercialization of wireless power with Powermat. So, you know, today you can drop your phone and other things now and great batch was interested in bringing wireless power into healthcare and that was where I started and I was a director there leading strategy on the area and then have continued to move up and most recently had the opportunity to build and shape the Aptyx brand. So going from director to senior director to vice president and senior vice president and, you know, it’s been a great ride and something that’s actually interesting as we’re talking about leadership and career choices and how we patch find our own.
I had been a vice president prior to coming into MedTech, but because the role was so interesting to me, the opportunity to make the impact, the purpose we all talk about and quite honestly, titles vary from place to place. And if the role is what you want it to be and you can see a path forward, then you know one. One piece of advice I would have is don’t let the title get in the way. As long as you know you have the right support network and the path and it is what you want to do.
I’m hearing some of the advice that you may have for people who are trying to follow in your footsteps. If you had to take a step back and think of one actionable step forward or one actionable phone call or decision that someone listening can take to help get them into the position you’re in, what would that look like?
I think you’ve got to find your network. You have to know who will mentor you, who will advocate for you and really work with that. Because nothing happens alone. I mean, it really does take a village. So you can put in all the work yourself, but if you’re not being promoted, being talked about, it’s your personal brand, right? So again, understanding your passion, what you’re good at, but then finding those who will help support, that’s the key to continuing to advance and also to just help your company succeed because then you bring your best self forward.
It’s so interesting how what you’re saying right now ties exactly into that first conversation at our very first Women in MedTech breakfast with Nina Goodheart. So Nina says almost exactly this, that it’s about finding your sponsors and your mentors and advocating for yourself and having them advocate for you and the responsibility on both sides. So I hope our audience who’s listening. Yes, write that down. We have two leaders who are saying the same thing. Listen to them. They are right!
Let’s talk a little bit about Aptyx before we shift into the conversation that I had recently with Nina. So we know about Aptyx’s incredible and impressive capabilities. But from your perspective, especially as a leader, what makes Aptyx stand out?
Yes. So you know, we bring together the aptitude and excellence of a great group of companies that we’ve united into one and as you mentioned in the intro, very strong set of capabilities. A lot to offer. But to me, what makes Aptyx, Aptyx is our team is that make it happen mindset. The tougher the challenge, the more excited our team gets. And we don’t just bring the engineering firepower. We work side by side side with our customers, always pushing boundaries.
So it’s combining the expertise and the can do spirit. Then with that foundational asset set earlier.
This year, if I recall, you launched Aptyx’s interventional systems and added a design and development center with the acquisition of the Charlotte, North Carolina facility from Medical Murray, can you tell us a little more about that?
Yeah, it’s very exciting because we’ve expanded and actually have more on the horizon. But the team at our Charlotte facility that leads Aptyx Interventional Systems, I mean they bring deep specialized expertise and you know, when I think about one thing that characterizes them is a fearless problem solving mindset. You know, others might back away, they jump in and it’s a good thing because complexity is what they do every day.
In Charlotte we develop and build implants and their delivery systems from design support to a finished device. And they have an incredible track record of life impacting projects they’ve supported. So pediatric heart valves. So probably gets to everybody’s heart stent graft systems for LAA and AAA carotid stents and their delivery systems. And a bunch more that I can’t even begin to pronounce you me both sister.
If you had to put your finger on maybe the one differentiator when it comes to the Charlotte facility, what would that be?
Well, there’s several, but one that stands out, biomaterials expertise and in particular ePTFE. That is a powerful material and if you aren’t familiar with it, we’ve actually done some things on DeviceTalks. But it got its start in the Manhattan Project. So that’s pretty interesting. So very powerful, but also tough to work with. Takes specialized know how and this team has that. And to give you a real life example, using ePTFE we’ve been able to take a nine French system down to a seven French system.
So that means easier access, a smoother delivery, smaller access point for the patient. So ultimately you know better outcomes. And that’s what we’re all here for. That’s our goal.
Congratulations again. But Beth, I can’t wait any longer. I am so keen to dig into today’s episode with Nina. So you and I previously we came together, we listened back to my interview with Nina and we talked about a few themes that kind of came out of the conversation. We talked about networking and talents. But I think you and I both kept coming back to this concept of empathy, empathy for self and empathy for ecosystem.
And when it comes to empathy for self, one of the sort of most striking moments in my conversation with Nina was a realization that I didn’t have empathy for myself. And I still don’t.
Most of us don’t.
Exactly. And you don’t know it until you get the attention and awareness around that. And then you go, well, oh, maybe I’m not doing what I’m asking others to do. You know, we’re asking in this industry and in leadership positions to have empathy. But if we don’t have empathy for ourselves, we’re not modeling that behavior. So that is something that just has completely resonated with me. What’s something that comes up when we talk about empathy?
I think we’re all too hard on ourselves. You know, we expect to be perfect. We don’t expect that of other people or maybe not all the time. And you know, Nina even said it like, don’t think someone has all the answers. No one does. And none of us do. None of us do things perfectly. So you have to give yourself some grace. And it’s hard if you’re type A perfectionist, all these things, but if you don’t give yourself some grace, you’re not going to move forward.
When we talk about empathy to the ecosystem, and Nina talks about this a lot, was there anything that came up for you about that?
Yeah, you know, I mean, it’s such an important trait and it helps us get outside ourselves and look at others and other experiences. And we could certainly use more of it these days because, you know, it doesn’t mean you agree with someone or. But it means you understand and you see a different perspective and without that, you don’t have a bigger lens. And honestly, you know, it’s so important to run a business well, on the culture side, we can understand that, but it’s actually just smart business because if you keep that narrow lens, you’re not going to find an unmet need.
And if you can’t see it, you can’t solve for it. And we’re in the business of solving problems.
It’s so funny that you mentioned that quote because in our pre conversation, our prep call for this, I actually wrote down, and here’s my, here’s my receipt, I wrote down that exact quote from you. If you can’t, if you don’t see it, you’re certainly not going to solve for it. That is something that I’ve heard you say, I’ve heard Nina say, I’ve heard many, many other leaders say. Nina also continues on in our interview together that Medtronic and her team, they think a lot about what it means for the patient and what it means for the patient’s family.
So they approach it scientifically, they approach it technologically, but they also approach it with this sense of empathy. About what it is and what they can do to truly make a difference. From there, they go into full product development mode. Do you feel a parallel to that?
Absolutely. You know, it’s funny when I think about building brands and so many people think about them as just the color, the logo, maybe the advertising. But to me, a brand is a promise. It’s a promise of what we’re going to deliver to our customers, our team members and our stakeholders. And a good brand is a promise delivered. So you also have to understand, like, what you’re set up to deliver and what they need and how that all works together.
So, you know, being a promise keeper is. Is a part of that in my mind.
I love that so much. Before we give the audience exactly what they came here to hear. And I am so excited. Oh, Nina is just a wealth of advice, knowledge, poise, grace. She is everything. You and I might be her two biggest fans. And she has a huge list of fans, so that’s saying a lot. But how can our audience find out more about Aptyx? Where do they go?
They go to www.Aptyx.com. that is Aptyx.com.
Wonderful. So with that, Beth Harrison Meyer, take the audience to what they came here to hear.
It is my great honor to introduce Nina Goodheart, Senior Vice President and President, Structural Heart and Aortic for Medtronic.
Nina Goodhart, Senior Vice President and President of Structural Heart and Aortic at Medtronic. Welcome to the podcast.
Good to be here with you again.
I was thinking the same thing, Nina. So you and I have been connected, I think is the best way in the last couple of years in a way that’s been incredibly meaningful for me. This is season two of our Women in MedTech podcast, and you are kicking us off with episode one. And there, there’s a really defining reason why I’ve asked you to sit down with me. You helped me build DeviceTalks’ Women in MedTech breakfast program.
You were my very, very first keynote. You and I had a Fireside chat, and we didn’t really know what it was going to look like, but we knew that we had a shared goal, a shared mission that we wanted to try to get more female leaders in MedTech. And we knew that the first step is to just bring that community together. And if it’s mentionable, it’s manageable. And we were hoping that something would come out of it.
Now for Women in MedTech Breakfast later, I can say conclusively that we’re onto something. We have tapped into an absolute need. And I have seen more change in a year and a half than I have in those first, you know, 17 and a half years. And you’re a big part of that, Nina.
Oh, I love that. Thank you. So saying that, and it’s been so fun to watch, and I’ve heard such great feedback, Helene, about you and about the MedTech breakfast and about the whole Women in Leadership program that you’re spearheading. And it’s been meaningful, I think, for women in the industry. So thank you.
Oh, well, let’s just stop the podcast now. I think I’ve got everything that I need.
You know, we have a lot to do. We have to keep going.
We definitely have to keep going. My season one of our Women in MedTech podcast really looked into the specific roles within the medical device product development cycle. And the feedback from season one was that it was another very important topic. And I wanted the roles to be defined through the lens of a female leader. Cause that’s something that is missing. What I didn’t expect, Nina, is that the feedback was more of the female perspective.
And that feedback came 100% from our allies. So not a single woman told me, hey, can we learn more from the female perspective? I want to ask these or I want to hear answers to these questions. They all came from our allies. And I find that to be this incredible moment in time where the door is open and there’s an interest. So if we’re being asked to talk more about our experiences and in doing so, inform and maybe even inspire, I feel like we should do more of that.
I think that’s amazing. And I really hadn’t thought about it that way, to be honest. So when I think about new product development and from my perspective, and as I think about that with my teams, it starts with what’s the need? Right. We spend a lot of time thinking about what is the unmet need, what do patients need, and what can we bring to patients that they don’t currently have. Right. We don’t want to bring just more me too devices.
We want to do things that are breakthrough, that have a meaningful difference and play a meaningful difference in the lives of patients. So it really all starts from a patient centric view. And maybe women look at that a little differently. Right. And so we think a lot about what does it mean for a patient, what does it mean for a patient’s family. And so we approach it scientifically, we approach it technologically, but I also think we approach it with a sense of empathy about what is it that we can do that will truly make a difference.
And then we go into full product development mode and we start to think about again, what are the unmet needs, what does the market opportunity look like, what’s the market potential? What does the competitive landscape look like, who’s in the market, who’s coming into the market? Do we think we can make a big enough difference to make that kind of investment? We spend a lot of time thinking around those kind of things and then we think about where we should go. Are we going to build something internally? Are we going to buy something that’s ready to go? Are we going to buy something that needs further product development?
And so we spend a lot of time thinking through that. And then we go into our, what we call our new product development cycles, where we have milestones and we start the whole R&D process, the whole clinical program process. Does this need a clinical trial or can we bring it to market without a clinical trial? All of those things start to come into play.
There are a couple things that you touched right there though, Nina, that I wanted to kind of dig into more. So perhaps as a female leader, we’re looking at that patient centric need, as you cited, with empathy. And over the last couple of years, I’ve been hearing terms that I would never have associated to MedTech before. Empathy in the way of industry. So empathy from a clinician or care provider, absolutely.
But empathy from industry, I haven’t really heard that as much. Vulnerability, that’s another term. And then I’ve been hearing intimacy as well, because it is such an intimate relationship to separate industry from the patient or the clinician or both. You know, there’s a missed opportunity there. And the more I’m hearing these terms, the more these terms feel like they absolutely define the medical device industry.
And I’m proud to be part of an industry that says that we are empathetic, that we are vulnerable, and that we have an intimate connection to all of the stakeholders, including the patients and their families and their friends. And we all have this shared goal for a better outcome, right?
I think that’s right. I might add to that the word equity, because we think about who are we not treating right now. Right. And so at Medtronic, we’ve been thinking especially about underserved populations, we’ve been thinking about women in terms of what we’re talking about here. And we know that women are undertreated and under diagnosed and understudied in clinical trials. And so how do we start to think about bringing technology into the market that’s focused on these populations, that brings these populations forward, that allows us to treat populations that we haven’t really treated before because we haven’t had the intentionality of going after them. And so I think that in medical devices at Medtronic in particular, we’re really thinking about how do we approach that differently so that we are more intimate, that we do have more empathy. But also from a market potential perspective, how are we getting after 50% of the market, for instance, when it comes to treating women, that’s essentially an untapped market. That makes no sense from a business. Agreed.
Right. And so it’s not just a, this is a really nice thing to do or this is a diversity initiative. This is a smart business decision in terms of how we approach a market cohort that’s just under treated.
I want to sing that from the rooftops. It’s untapped market there. The cash potential is unbelievable. And that doesn’t even include the actual fact that we’re saving lives and helping patients who are undergoing treatment, are getting interventions, have leading a better and longer life. So we have these amazing outcomes that we’re trying to achieve, and those are the outcomes that matter.
But you’re absolutely right. The business decisions behind this, if nothing else, is the reason why we should.
Just do it and why multifold, right? It’s how do we treat 50% of the population that we don’t treat well right now? And then when we do that, let’s think about women. They drive their families. They are major contributors to the economy. They’re major contributors to their communities. And so if we don’t treat women, we’re not treating their families, we’re not enhancing their communities. Right. And so there’s a ripple effect, if you will, of not doing that, of not doing that well.
And so we’ve really been focused on how do we think about this patient cohort, how do we treat women? And then what is that ripple effect that keeps going? Once you have women treated, women, they’re not well treated, they can’t take care of their families. Right. And so it’s a domino effect that’s really, really important, I think.
Oh, snap. Agree, clap, nod my head. All of the mannerisms I can do to communicate that I’m with you 100%. And I actually wrote an article for Medical Design and Outsourcing based off of your presentation at our DeviceTalks Boston a couple years back on structural heart and awareness for the female population and heart health for women, which I’ll dig into in a little bit, but I’ll drop the link of that article here in the show notes so our audience can really deep dive into this conversation.
I think it’s important also, if we’re talking about intimacy and vulnerability and empathy, to better understand our leaders. And in a way, I would love this podcast to not just bring attention and awareness to this important topic, but to really unpack kind of the making of a leader. And one of the questions that I really, really like asking, which I feel like informs personality really well, is what was your first job?
Not your first job in MedTech? What was your first job ever?
Wow. My first paying job, I worked in my college dorm cafeteria serving food. I’m not quite sure how I got that job or why I got that job, and I think I was glad when that job ended. But it taught me what hard work really is. But my first, I’ll say my first real job was I was a fact checker for Chicago Magazine. Also during college, I went to Northwestern, and it was amazing because it was so detail oriented. And it really taught me that every single fact, no matter how small, was critically important.
Because you can’t do a story right unless you’ve got truth, and stringing together all of those facts to make something that was honest and real and important was great learning for me. And so I did that for quite a while while I was in college.
Cafeteria work. That is an industry of hospitality and of service. And how many times have we said that MedTech is an industry of service? That’s who we are. That’s why we’re here, and that’s one of the reasons why we choose to stay. That is our industry. I also started in hospitality and in an industry of service. Yeah. So I’m like, I knew Nina and I would have a commonality for sure. What was that—let’s just call it the defining or pivotal moment—that turned your head to MedTech?
You know, I started in advertising, so I graduated college, went into consumer advertising about as far from MedTech as you can possibly get. But I learned marketing, right? I learned how to take customer needs and translate that into a product and articulate the benefits of that product. And I did that for quite a while. Big New York City advertising, Mad Men kind of things. And then I started in pharma advertising.
Right. How do you take that same kind of information and then communicate that to our physician audience? And so I moved from that. Then I went into strategic consulting in pharma and medical device and then moved into medical device. So not quite a straight path, a little circuitous, but I think one building on top of the other.
I mean, the path forward is not a straight line. I mean, I think that we can all agree on that. And what matters is that, at least from my perspective, that you landed in the best industry in the world and then we’re going to keep you forever.
And thank you for that. But I do agree. Best industry ever for all the reasons that we’ve always talked about, right? We see needs. We see people who need technology to help them either live a better life or to extend their lives or to alleviate pain. All of the things that Medtronic is focused on. We then have the technology and the engineering and the clinical work to be able to build that into something that’s going to have an impact on a patient and their entire family. Because while we talk about serving patients, and that’s what I talk about a lot, right? We have this privilege of serving patients, but it’s not just a patient.
It’s a patient and their children and their parents and their spouses and their partners, right? And everyone who cares about them. And so you help that one patient, you’ve helped scores of people, and that just continues again, to have a ripple effect.
I love hearing that. I just love hearing that over and over and over again. Not that I need to be reminded why I’m here every single day, but hearing it just makes me feel like there’s no other place I’d rather be. The fact that you don’t have to know what you want to do from the get go, you know, you can just one foot in front of the other and start finding what you connect to and finding where your passion is. And Nina, everything that you’ve said so far, I mean, it sounds like you were looking for meaning in your work, meaning in your time.
Exactly. And for me, it’s all about purpose. Right. I’ve had the opportunity to work in industries where we sold soda and we sold personal care products and all kinds of things that people need, there’s no doubt about that. But to be able to impact a patient’s health, to be able to take somebody who’s ill and make them better. Right. To be able to provide this level of technology to the physicians that we have the privilege again, of working with and having them utilize that, to have major impacts and see major strides in medicine, it’s incredible.
You’re right. It’s unbelievable. And we are, we’re very lucky to be a part of it.
I want to talk about your leap from that marketing role into consultancy. The number of female leaders who have come to me and talked about their path and said that they wanted to start a consultancy business or they wanted to start their own business, but they didn’t feel that they were qualified enough, they didn’t feel like they were supportive enough, and they didn’t know how to risk, because it is a risk.
That shift that you described to me is, I think, the making of a MedTech leader. How did you know? Or not necessarily how did you know? Because I don’t know how anybody would know. But what got you to say, I can do this and I am going to do it.
Yeah. So a little bit different, just for clarification. So I went from consumer marketing, right. So big shift, then into pharmaceutical marketing. Did that for a while and then started to think about wanting to do something bigger. Right. And really focusing strategically on how do you make big decisions, how do you shift a market, how do you create a market, how do you expand a market? That was really intriguing to me.
And so I focused a lot on how do I think about market development is the way we would phrase it now in MedTech. And so I had the opportunity to work strategically with consulting companies, big consulting companies. But then I had the opportunity to go to a small boutique firm where they had no healthcare practice. And they asked me to come in and start a MedTech practice within that consulting group.
And so I came in and did that for a while. I started both in pharma and in MedTech, working on some just interesting problems that companies had and they just didn’t have the expertise to solve. And honestly, one of those companies was Medtronic and so work in the coronary space on a consulting basis. And I got a call saying, you know, it’s been great to consult with you, but it would be even greater if you would come and join Medtronic, which I did. And it was probably the best decision by far.
I made my entire career.
For those who are trying to answer that question, you know, how do I get a role like Nina Goodheart? What would you say was what Medtronic — what was Medtronic looking for? To the best of your knowledge and information you had at the time, what was Medtronic looking for and why were you that person?
Medtronic was really focused on: How did they build and rebuild some of the markets that they were in? How did they create opportunities in existing markets that had slowed down a little bit? But as they were thinking about bringing new products into the market, how did they create something that just didn’t exist? And that’s what I had been doing both on the pharma side and on the consulting side. My focus was really on market development.
And so when Medtronic needed help and support in that area, I had known some people who were there, I was consulting on market development programs and I think they looked at my background, they looked at what I was doing for Medtronic in that consulting and decided that this was a competency that they wanted to bring into the organization. So I came in with a very specific skill set, if you will, not necessarily specific to MedTech, but a skill set that MedTech needed.
And I spent a good part of my Medtronic career working from a market development perspective in the cardiovascular space, looking at how do you build, how do you globalize and how do you expand. And I continue to do that. It’s one of the most fun parts of my job.
Well, I mean, this is the true embodiment of a business leader, right? So you’ve started building business from get go.
What I love doing is looking at: there’s an unmet need, right? We can create technology, right? We’ve got amazing engineers, right? So we can create technologies to meet that unmet patient need. But then you’ve got to bring that to the market, right? And you’ve got to convince the market — that they need this, that they need this specific product, what are these specific attributes, right? You were in marketing. How do you get that message out to that market? How do you convince physicians who have never worked in a space that this is a space that’s going to be developed and that they can be a part of this?
And you do that in partnership and collaboration, right? And we create new spaces like renal denervation for hypertension, like TAVR in structural heart. I mean, there’s so many examples of brand new markets that were created, but they started from something small, right? And then we built them and we built them and we built them until they became, you know, what we see today. And that to me is the essence of business leadership, of MedTech leadership and what we do for patients.
So I’m hearing that it’s okay to start with something small, that you don’t have to have all the answers yet, you just start small.
No one has all the answers. Don’t let anyone ever tell you they have all the answers, right? They may have some of the questions, right? And then we start again to get the information, we get the facts, we validate that those are true. We understand. We start to build. We build something from that’s small, right? We pilot it and then we grow it into something that makes, you know, potentially difference for millions of people.
How incredible is that?
And it feels achievable when you break it down as steps like that. And it’s not again, about having all the answers or leaping into something, but just taking a step forward. And that will bring you to where you should go or where you want.
Taking that step, right? Because what we see so often is people, they’re afraid, right? And what if it doesn’t go well? What if I’m wrong? What if I make a mistake? So what? Right? Then you’ll retrace. But if you don’t take that first step, then you’re never going to get to the second or third step. And even if you have to reset your direction, you’re already making progress. And I think, especially for women, right, that’s something that we just have to think about all the time. Take that first step and start moving forward.
Yes, I know that we talked about this at the Women in MedTech Breakfast, and it was one of the things that really impacted the way that I was thinking. And I shared with you that I love being wrong. I love being wrong because that means I learned something. And how else are you supposed to move forward unless you’re learning something? So I embrace being wrong. I embrace this idea of I’m going to try, I’m going to start, I’m going to answer the question with the information I have at the time and the resources I have at the time and hope that that will get me where I need to go. So then I can answer another question or another version of that question.
And what you’re saying here — what if I’m wrong? So what? That is the message. So what? That’s okay.
And you know what? We work with amazing teams. I may not have all the answers. Someone on my team has probably a lot of the answers, right? And the best part is if they challenge, right. You know, you’ve had this idea. I don’t think that’s right. Great. Let’s talk about it — it’s the best, right? And then we’ll get to a better answer together, right? So depend on the people around you, put the best people around you, right? The best people you can possibly find, the smartest people you can find. And if you’re really lucky, they’re a lot smarter than you are.
Right. You come up with amazing things.
I love that so much. Let’s go into your role at Medtronic. So before we talk about specifically at Medtronic, let’s take a step up. What is the role in a general sense for MedTech? Like what does that job look like?
It’s a really great question. I would say that the job is to — of course the job is about running the P&L and running teams and bringing new products to market and all of that. But from my perspective, the job is really to think in a very broad, big picture way. What is the future of the business that I’m running? How do I think about where this business is going to be in 5 years, 10 years, 15 years?
How do I build big broad strategies to meet those objectives? And then how do I get the right talent, get the right ideas and put a program and process in place to meet that? So it’s really, it’s strategy, it’s business development. It’s really thinking big and broad around the space so that we can meet the needs not only that we’re going to have today, but the needs we’re going to have well into the future.
For those who are trying to get into a leadership role, business leadership role, do you think that there’s a particular personality type or a particular strategy that can help somebody looking to get into that role?
I don’t think there’s a personality type because I think we have to bring all styles, all personalities. I don’t think there’s one. But I think it’s somebody who’s incredibly curious, somebody who’s really an agile learner. I think a lot about the question of what if. What if we did this? What if we thought about it this way? What if this was possible? And then we start to think about, well, what if — what is that art of possibility — and bringing my teams along to help think along those lines.
Somebody who can do that absolutely has the right mindset, I would say, to get into a role like this.
So if I’m hearing you correctly, one: somebody who appreciates that a diversity of perspective is key, critical.
Absolutely right. But it’s how do you have that vision, how do you have that strategic overview and how do you have that sense of purpose that I think drives strong business leadership?
The sense of purpose leads me perfectly to Medtronic because I know that there is a very strong company culture of purpose. So let’s talk about your role at Medtronic. I think generally speaking all of that applies — where maybe more specifically is Medtronic different?
So Medtronic is, it’s an amazing company, right? So not only the largest MedTech company in the world, not only the incredible products that it brings across a whole myriad of medical areas, but it’s still a mission-driven company. So founded 75 years ago, the founder wrote this mission that has six tenets. And I would say that to a person at Medtronic, when you ask them why they stay, why they do what they do, why they are willing to go that extra mile, why they work on a weekend or get up at 5 in the morning or get on one more plane — and almost every one of them to a person will say, I believe in the mission of serving patients.
And so I know on my team when we’re making big strategic decisions, we will always look at that mission and say, does this decision align to the mission? Are we doing things in the best interests of patients? And there are times we will make decisions that may not be the most financially advantageous, but they’re the right things to do. And those are the decisions we’re always the most proud of.
Right. Because we’re doing them with the end patient in mind. And somebody will always say, that patient could be my mother. And so when we’ll ask a question, do we do this or do we do that, inevitably somebody will say, well, if it was my mom, this is what I think we should do. And you know what? It is your mom, because it’s somebody’s mom, it’s somebody’s brother, it’s somebody’s daughter, right?
So we think a lot about that patient — not patients at large, not millions of patients, but a face on that patient and what impact are we going to have? And that drives almost everything we do.
There’s an ownership quality to what you’re explaining here, where you’re owning the responsibility of your decisions and with the gravitas and the gravity that this could be my mom — because it is somebody’s mom.
It always is. And we talk about — I talk about, we talk about — this is a privilege to work here, right? And to do this. And we serve patients. We don’t treat patients, but we serve patients and we serve them with the best technology that we know how to put on the market.
Well, speaking of best technology put on the market, I know that you recently launched your ALERT study, which uses AI to detect structural heart disease earlier and more equitably. And we talked about the importance of being equitable and equity earlier. Can you give me just an overview of what that study is and what makes it different?
So we took a look at the data, and we realized that the majority of patients who are treated with TAVR for valve replacement are Caucasian. But the data does not say that only Caucasians have this disease, if you will. Right. And so it’s a matter of treatment. So what we wanted to do is to use AI, to use something called Tempus Next, so an AI tool that attaches to the EHR so that we could see patients who are already in the system. So we’re not going outside to look for them.
They’re already in a hospital system, but they’re not being flagged for having aortic stenosis, and they’re not being flagged for treatment. And so we’re doing that in a randomized clinical trial where we can go into a set number of sites who are in areas that have diverse patient populations to see whether or not utilizing this technology will allow us to identify patients in the system who are not being treated, who should be treated.
And so we think that we’re going to be able to see that patients who are currently undertreated will now be able to get flagged, to be identified, to go through their diagnostic testing, and then to be treated as appropriate.
So that’s identifying this gap or this miss. And that, again, touches into this empathy thinking. It’s not always about moving forward. Sometimes it’s about looking at where we are right now and where those gaps are right now, and utilizing technology that has maybe finally caught up to what our goals are — to how we can identify patients who are in the pool who haven’t been identified and what we can do for them.
That’s exactly right. And so if we can do that, then we can start to expand that and we can say when we use these tools and we go into the system and we identify these patients, we can — we can essentially save more lives. And wouldn’t that be an amazing thing?
Oh, man. I mean, that’s the dream come true. I mean, a lot of the focus of this podcast is about female leadership. How did the ALERT study come to be? Who were the people who said, we should visit this, let’s revisit this, let’s do something about it? And how did that come to fruition?
We have a really talented group of people in my teams that have been looking at health equity overall, and we’ve been looking at it from a number of ways. One, we’ve been looking at just overall inequity, right. And that’s really where the ALERT study came from. Could we gather actual data? Because there’s a lot of anecdotes. But could we have data in a randomized clinical trial that would show us that this kind of intervention with an AI tool could make a difference in underserved communities? Could we actually see that these patients weren’t treated? And then show physicians at large, look, if we make an intervention, we can make a difference.
So that would be one way we’re looking at it. The other way we’re looking at health equity is that the female population — that you and I have talked about. Right. And so we’ve run a trial called the SMART trial. 87% of those people enrolled were women. Looking at whether our technology would be superior in women with small annuli, small heart valves in a randomized clinical trial. And we haven’t seen a lot of clinical trials focused on this. We see a lot of people talking about health equity. But we decided to do a study, right — give physicians the data so that they can go back and say, this is a way I can treat my patients better.
I can treat this cohort of patients better. I can treat this cohort of patients better. But not, again, with anecdotes, but with actual data. And that’s really what we set out to do.
Oh, I love all of that. And you touched on the importance of revisiting data, the importance of advocacy. Without that, you can’t move forward or you can’t bring attention and awareness where it needs to be. But you also touch on the importance of heart health for women. But when we’re talking about the importance of heart health for women, can you tell me about Letter to My Mother, a campaign that I’m so excited about? Tell me about that.
Thrilled to be able to tell you about this. So as we’ve looked at health equity, what we saw — which so many people know but don’t necessarily pay as much attention to as they need to — is that cardiovascular disease is still the number one killer of women. It’s not cancer, it’s not ovarian cancer, it’s not uterine cancer, all of which are important and need to be studied and need to be treated. But if we’re looking at the number one reason women die, it’s because of cardiovascular disease.
And so we wanted to take a hard look at that, so we did a survey of women 30 to 50 to better understand what we were seeing here. And what we found out is that women are uncomfortable in their own families, talking about their cardiovascular health. They’d rather talk about religion and politics, right? Women don’t talk about their health. They just don’t. They underplay their symptoms and they just believe that they have to take care of everyone else, but they don’t necessarily have to take care of themselves.
And so a group of people within my team came up with this brilliant idea. And I don’t want to take any credit because this was their idea, but they came up with this brilliant idea of creating this campaign called Letter to My Mother. And we launched it during May — Women’s Heart Health Month, as well as Mother’s Day following in May. And the idea was for every woman to have a conversation with her mother, a mother figure, a woman who was important in her life, to make sure she was paying attention to her cardiovascular health.
Was she going for a checkup? When was the last time she saw a cardiologist? Did she know her cholesterol numbers? Does she have hypertension? Is she underplaying her symptoms? I can’t tell you how many times we talk to women who go to the doctor and the doctor says, how are you feeling? And they say, fine.
Yes, guilty.
Fine. You know, my husband has this, my son has this, my daughter has this, but I’m fine, right? But then they go home and they tell their children, I have this racing feeling in my chest. I’m very short of breath. And we have to remember, women’s symptoms are different, right? So those classic symptoms that people are trained to see in medical school, that’s not the way women necessarily present. So fatigue, exhaustion, shortness of breath — those are symptoms that women have that aren’t necessarily recognized as being precursors to a cardiovascular issue. So we want women to talk to the women who are important in their lives to be able to raise that so that we can get women to the doctor talking about their symptoms and getting checked and seeing whether or not they need a medication, they need some kind of an intervention, or they need some kind of technology.
How can we be a part of Letter to My Mother?
If you could help us spread the word, that would be phenomenal. This is something that I think just — I wanted to say — every woman, every person should be talking to a woman who’s important in their life. Their mother, their mother-in-law, their wife, their grandmother, whoever that might be, right? Are you focused on your cardiovascular health? Remember, we’ve got matriarchs. If they’re not taking care of themselves, they’re not going to take care of their families.
They’re not going to take care of their communities. And we’ve got to have women recognize that taking care of themselves is critically important. That is not — that’s not a luxury, right? They’re not being self-indulgent. It’s critical that women pay attention to these symptoms. To scream the words rooftops. We just have to have women taking care of themselves.
I mean, you hit one of the hardest changes. I think it’s a systemic change. This is like — for me, speaking from my perspective as a mother, as a daughter, as an aunt, a niece — stop downplaying my symptoms. Start advocating for myself. Because if I’m not healthy, then I can’t be the best mom or best wife or best daughter. And I need to hear that over and over. And it’s shocking to me because you hit the nail on the head. I had a very severe flu fairly recently and I’m like, well, I’ll be fine. And I was still working because I had — I mean the email just stacks up and stacks up and stacks up. And finally I was like, well, maybe I’ll just go to urgent care really quickly. Maybe there’s a band-aid that I can get just to help me like get through my day. And I had pneumonia and bronchitis and I was still working my eight-hour day, still picking up my kiddo, making sure that he was okay because he had some symptoms and, you know, just trying to make sure that my husband stayed as healthy as possible.
And it was all while having pneumonia and bronchitis at the same time. And it was just — there wasn’t this opening for me to even acknowledge that. And that’s a problem, huge problem.
And when you even elevate that right to cardiovascular health — to women, right? And they’re not paying attention. Either they just don’t know or they downplay or they’re worried about everything and everyone else. But we’ve got to continue to raise the awareness. And we’ve got to study, right? We’ve got to make sure that we’re studying these things so when women get to the doctor, physicians have the data to be able to treat them, differentiate.
A lot of what we’re talking about I think emphasizes why it’s so important to have females in the medical device industry just in general. Like there’s obviously a different perspective that we bring, but it also I think speaks to all of the positives that that way of thinking brings in. So from your perspective, what are some of the ways just being a female in MedTech — whether it’s a leadership position or one of the necessary stakeholder positions that we need to move this industry forward — what does just being a woman in MedTech bring benefit-wise?
Well, I think anytime we’ve got diverse experiences, diverse perspectives, it’s helpful, right? Because it generates different ways of thinking, it generates new ideas, it allows things to be challenged in a way that maybe they weren’t challenged before. I do think that I think of myself as a business leader, not necessarily always as a female business leader. But then I do think about the fact that women often are more empathetic, right?
I believe there are studies that would show that we know that in healthcare, women, when they’re treated by women, have better clinical outcomes, right? And so I think a lot about how do we bring those kinds of things forward. And I think about the fact that women like me and others are focused on women’s health — not from a maternal health perspective, but from a cardiovascular perspective, right? And are we being intentional? And part of my focus is to be really intentional about studying this, bringing data to clinicians, bringing data to women so that when they recognize these symptoms, we’ve got data that backs up what those treatment options might be. And if we don’t study it, how can we expect anyone to have paid attention to it?
Right. And so I think a lot about the fact that women weren’t studied really until the 1980s — that we studied men and we studied mice, right? We studied neither of which menstruate.
Right.
Which — we didn’t account all of the hormonal differences that make men men and make women women, right? And so we’ve got to really think much more specifically about who we’re treating, the patients that we’re treating. They’re not patients at large. We’ve got to think about them anatomically and they’re different. And so how are we creating technologies that make a difference for women so that women live longer?
If you had to define what it means to be a leader — and absolutely, to your point, not a female leader, a leader — how would you define what a leader is?
I think a leader from my perspective is somebody who can set a vision and a strategy for a business that other people can follow. Because you’re not a leader without followership, right? And so you’ve got to create the strategy and vision that other people look at and say, yes, I believe in that and I want to help bring that forward. And so being able to elevate that, to think in a far-reaching way, but also to align it in such a way that other people want to be on that journey with you, I think is critically, critically important.
I think it’s critically important to be honest and real and authentic and transparent. Otherwise, I just don’t think it works.
Just going to sit in that for a second. Nina Goodheart, Senior Vice President and President of Structural Heart and Aortic for Medtronic, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I’ve loved every second with you, as I always do.
It is a privilege to spend this time with you. So thank you.
And that’s a wrap, my friends. The first episode of the new season went better than I could have hoped. And that’s in large part to the incredible Nina Goodheart, who, as always, delights. Nina reminds us at the beginning of the conversation that cardiovascular disease remains the number one killer of women. We discussed the significance of health equity and Medtronic’s Letter to My Mother campaign, which really is so important — more important now than ever — and is aimed at encouraging women and our allies to engage in conversations about cardiovascular wellness.
In the show notes, I’ve put a link in to how to get involved with that campaign and I really hope that you do — write your letter today. So thank you, thank you, thank you Nina, for what you have done and continue to do for our ecosystem, for Women in MedTech, and for me personally. And thank you to all of you who have helped shape season two and for continuing to support all of our Women in MedTech programming.
Speaking of support, how great was my first in-studio guest, Aptyx’s Beth Harrison Meyer? It was super fun revisiting the conversation with Nina and highlighting this episode’s theme: empathy to self and empathy to the ecosystem. So thank you again, Beth, for joining me and thank you to Aptyx for supporting our efforts every step of the way. To learn more about Aptyx, please visit their website at www.Aptyx.com. That’s APTYX.com.
Playtime is over — now it’s time to go. But before you do, please connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m Kayleen Brown. I’m curious to know what came up for you when you think about empathy in relation to a healthy MedTech ecosystem. Let me know. I’ll catch you again in a few weeks for the next episode of the DeviceTalks Women in MedTech podcast. Thanks for listening.
