From Mazor to Hugo and beyond: Where does Medtronic see opportunities in robotic surgery

May 5, 2021

In this episode, two of the executives leading Medtronic’s push into robotics surgery update listeners on the progress and potential of Medtronic’s MAZOR X Stealth and Hugo RAS system platforms.

Megan Rosengarten, president of surgical robotics, says HUGO is poised to deliver surgeons newfound capabilities and options. The company hopes to begin selling the system later this year after filing for a CE Mark in Europe and an IDE with the US Food and Drug Administration.

We also speak with Linnea Burman, vice president and general manager, enabling technologies, about Medtronic’s cranial and spinal offerings including the spine surgical robot, Mazor.

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Tom Salemi (00:00):

Hey, everyone. This is Tom Salemi of DeviceTalks. Welcome to our newest member of the DeviceTalks podcast family, it's called MedtronicTalks. Our constant search to find new ways to bring new insights in the MedTech industry led us to the fine, fine folks at Medtronic. They've agreed to make their senior leaders available to us and to you. In each episode, we'll discuss the opportunities and challenges facing one of MedTech's clear leaders, so you'll have an inside view on what makes Medtronic go. We'll ask the questions, Medtronic will provide the answers, and our great network of sponsors makes it all possible. So sit back, pop on a treadmill, take the dog for a walk, whatever you do when you listen to a great podcast and let's listen to how Medtronic is getting the job done. Let's go.

Tom Salemi (00:45):

Hey, everybody. This is Tom Salemi. Welcome to this episode of the MedtronicTalks podcasts brought to you by Maxon. We're talking surgical robotics today. I'm going to speak with Megan Rosengarten, she is the President of Surgical Robotics at Medtronic. I also have the great pleasure of talking to Linnea Burman. Linnea is the Vice President and General Manager of Enabling Technologies Of Cranial And Spinal Technologies at Medtronic. So we're going to talk a lot about Mazor™, we're going to talk a lot about Hugo™. Lots of movement in the space for the latter.

Tom Salemi (01:18):

Medtronic has filed for CE mark approval for Hugo™ and it's submitted an IDE in the US. In fact, it hopes to begin its first patient procedure with Hugo™'s RAS system very soon, coming weeks. So lots going on, lots to talk about. Linnea and Megan were great to talk to. We talked about where Medtronic and surgical robotics is headed. Far-ranging conversation, very grateful for the time they took, and I hope you'll enjoy this conversation.

Tom Salemi (01:47):

I'm happy to introduce our sponsor, Maxon. Maxon of course, is a worldwide leading provider of high-precision drive systems. I'm joined by Peter van Beek. Peter is the Business Development Manager for the medical group at Maxon. Peter, tell us about all the different industries, all the different projects we can find Maxon in.

Peter van Beek (02:04):

Using an automobile analogy, Maxon is under the hood of many critical medical devices. Maxon drives heart pumps, ventilators, insulin, dialysis, drug delivery and feeding pumps, lab automation, atherectomy devices, respirators, and surgical power tools.

Tom Salemi (02:22):

Thanks, Peter. Now, let's hear from Megan Rosengarten and Linnea Burman of Medtronic. Well, Linnea Burman and Megan Rosengarten, welcome to the podcast.

Megan Rosengarten (02:35):

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Linnea Burman (02:36):

Thanks so much, Tom.

Tom Salemi (02:38):

Let's understand where Medtronic is in surgical robotics. This is a field where you're making a real aggressive push, there's a lot of other activity in the space as well. But before we get into the broader conversation, I'd like to understand what areas within Medtronic you both are working on in regards to robotics. Linnea, let's talk first about your space. You're in the cranial-spine therapy space, correct?

Linnea Burman (03:04):

That's correct. I'm general manager for the enabling technologies organization, which includes as we're talking about today, spinal robotics, but also navigation, imaging, powered instruments and surgical energy equipment. And that's just in the broader cranial and spinal technologies business, which also includes our spinal implants as well as our China orthopedics organization, and now most recently Medicrea.

Tom Salemi (03:26):

And in terms of systems, so the Mazor™ follows under your business?

Linnea Burman (03:31):

Correct.

Tom Salemi (03:31):

Correct. Excellent. And Megan Rosengarten, where are you coming from, in a robotic sense?

Megan Rosengarten (03:36):

Yeah. So, I'm the president of our surgical operating unit. Our main focus is on what we usually refer to as soft tissue versus as hard tissue or bones, so soft tissue surgery with the robotic platform. And then we also have another business under our umbrella called Digital Surgery, which is a company that we acquired, an AI-based simulation and training as well as OR AI company out of London last year. We actually just celebrated our one year anniversary of the acquisition today, so it's a very exciting part of our company as well.

Tom Salemi (04:13):

That's great. So, this is a very exciting space, we've seen different attempts other companies have brought in surgical robots at this point in time. We're seeing a lot of other players in this space, startups and larger companies, building their own robotics platform. So I'd love to understand from you both from Medtronic's perspective, what is driving this surgical robotics race? Is it a need to be competitive with other MedTech providers in the space or are there demands coming from the surgeons or the providers or the patients? Megan, is that something you want to start off with?

Megan Rosengarten (04:51):

Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I'm happy to. I think there's a couple places that are pretty interesting, that is the patient plays a different role in the last 10 years and in the last year than they have in the past in terms of driving some of the decisions and the investment in technology. And so, part of my answer was there's a patient pull, an ask for advanced technologies. But then when I step back and say, "Well, what's really fueling that?" I think it is the advent of data and the access to data and across lots different ways. And in one way with the patient getting now easily accessible information about care options and technology has pretty dramatically changed the decision makers and the way we think about bringing technology to bear on serving patients. So I think that's a pretty interesting thing, within the last again, 10 years or so, that's just going continue.

Megan Rosengarten (05:43):

And then, the corollary on the healthcare provider side, so let's stick with surgeons. I'm seeing this pretty interesting change over the past, again I'd say five to 10 years, of wanting data-enabled decisions, even to proficiency and surgeons wanting more information on how they're doing and how they're performing and it's almost akin to a shift from being an artist to a high-performing athlete. So I think there's some interesting dynamic again that kind of all boiled down to being able to access more and more information and hungry for that, that has now led into robotics and data-enabled therapy.

Tom Salemi (06:20):

That's a great point. Yeah. And I want to get into digital surgery in a moment. Linnea, from your perspective, number one what is driving the interest in robotics? But also, with Mazor™, you sort of have a unique play in that space. There's not a lot of activity in spine in regard to robotics, so how do you view that opportunity?

Linnea Burman (06:41):

Yeah. That's a great question, Tom. And I'll build on Megan's answer. Certainly, the patients have a strong interest in understanding that they can get a predictable outcome from spine surgery. And today, I would say across the different stakeholders that you mentioned, there is an appreciation that spine is one of the more complex areas of medicine and there's a fair amount of variability in how surgeons approach a procedure; there's many ways to do it, there's a lot of different technology available.

Linnea Burman (07:09):

And so, we are really trying to drive to predictive outcomes by getting to a stronger view on patient selection, by building consensus around an approach. And so, robotics was one of the pathways to getting there because there's some planning capabilities that can start to build that consensus and allow surgeons to execute against the plan that they build in the operating room. So it's really a convergence of recognition of the variability, so I would say that the drive for robotics is coming across the stakeholders.

Tom Salemi (07:38):

You explained the areas that you're overseeing in Medtronic; Medtronic's undergone a rather extensive reorganization. I'd like to understand how robotics is fitting into those 20 different businesses. How many of them are they touching? Do you see a day when they touch almost all of them? I understand Linnea, you've got your own focus on your business, but how will robotics be applied across Medtronic's many platforms?

Linnea Burman (08:11):

I think today you've got the two examples of where Medtronic has already adopted robotics, but I would say more broadly, we've got a lot of excitement around the potential for robotics in many different applications. So, while these are the current examples that we have, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some application in many other business units down the line.

Megan Rosengarten (08:31):

Yeah. I definitely agree. And I think two things came to mind with that question, and one is that we have what we call are pan-Medtronic technology vectors as it relates to robotics. And those four vectors are identified as robotic platforms, and you can imagine the things that fall into that; things like robotic arms, control systems, et cetera. And then we have navigation and visualization, we've got instruments in implants, and then the fourth is data and analytics.

Megan Rosengarten (08:59):

And by organizing on these four vectors and putting purpose, investment in thought across Medtronic into those four, it's part of how we get to exactly Tom, your question of what is that pan-Medtronic view that we're building in continuing to invest in technologies and capabilities so that when we do have opportunities... and then this kind of gets to the second, I think of opportunities as meaningful clinical and economic problems to be solved that could be served by a robot and I think there are many of those across the other 18 operating units that we have within the business. And I know we'll start to see more of tapping into those four vectors and those capabilities in some of those other operating units.

Tom Salemi (09:44):

Early on, there was some debate as to how much value the robotics actually offered, and I think with other companies, part of the selling point was, "Your hospital can have a billboard up on the highway saying, 'We have a robot doing surgery, come have your surgery done with us,'" which is an interesting way to sort of add value to a provider. But we're going to your earlier point, we've kind of gone beyond that where robotics is really adding more than just enhancing the actual surgery at the time or the surgicals performance at the time, but really building a mountain of evidence and data around it. Megan, what does the last five years look like in terms of that transformation from a marketing tool that also added some performance, but now providing much, much more? What has the past five years been in that evolution?

Megan Rosengarten (10:36):

Yeah. It's one of my favorite sort of case studies, 20 years, just to your point and you depicted it really succinctly there of something that in the beginning was a little bit of a niche in a novelty 20 years ago. And I think we were all wondering what was going to pan out in terms of the clinical and economic outcomes of benefits from robotic, and fast forward to today or the last 10 years, I do think we've seen a couple things.

Megan Rosengarten (11:02):

One, that user experience really matters, and it's not something to take lightly. So the advantages to the surgeon and the OR staff of having a robotic system to increase confidence and precision and visualization in particular, that's a real thing. And so is the ergonomic components of robotics, those are real end-user benefits that I think are one of the things that made robotics sticky over the 20 years as we started to generate to your question, evidence that there are actually either improvements and outcomes today, or the opportunity to go there. Seeing the light of, "Yes. This when added with data and with added-in technologies that are getting the ability to see the unseen with the naked eye and the ability to have movements that are so precise and reduce any tremor from the human hand." Those kinds of things are iteratively improving, improving, improving, and adding up to what we see as starting to see better outcomes in a clinical sense.

Megan Rosengarten (12:08):

And then I think when you look past the past five years and look forward, in industry and in healthcare, I think people really believe, I believe, in the power of continuing that technology roadmap and increasing how we make better decisions with data is going to get to better outcomes, both clinical, economic, and it is going to increase access to healthcare for more patients. So it's definitely evolution and a journey, I guess on and the where we came from and being pretty different today.

Tom Salemi (12:38):

Linnea, I have a different question for you, but I would just ask do you have anything to add to that question?

Linnea Burman (12:44):

It's interesting because Megan hit on a number of themes that I would say are very similar in the orthopedic robotics space. And what I'm excited about is I think when this started, it offered a level of precision that was very attractive in the placement of pedicle screws. And that's just one aspect of the procedure, but we'll continue to build on that and we're seeing that already.

Linnea Burman (13:03):

So adding to procedure, the point that Megan made about ergonomics for physicians to kind of save themselves a little bit in terms of the... spine surgery is a very physical type of procedure, and now with the robotics and the way we're starting to incorporate more of our powered instruments, for example, it's just a less of a physical requirement on the physician.

Linnea Burman (13:25):

But then there's always been a value around planning, but a lot of physicians don't have the time or just haven't incorporated presurgical planning to the extent that it may add value to the procedure, and robotics is really moving that along much faster. Taking a few minutes to conduct the presurgical plan and then execute that plan with the robot, with the help of the robot in the operating room, and have it go exactly as planned, is one of the benefits we're seeing play it out today. And I think the roadmap from here just gets that greater and greater.

Tom Salemi (13:57):

We're going to take a quick break from this conversation to bring back our sponsor. I'm here with Peter van Beek. Peter, once again, is a business development manager at Maxon. Peter, let's take a step back, tell us a bit more about Maxon.

Peter van Beek (14:10):

Maxon at its core is an engineering company that develops and builds world-class electric drive systems. We're a Swiss-based, privately-held global company. And what's nice about our product line is you can piece together whatever you need, it's modular in its form. Do you need a subtractional DC brush motor or brushless? Or a servo assembly consisting of a motor, a gearhead on the front, a sensor on the back and a controller? In other words, a complete mechatronic drive system? We provide standard catalog, semi-custom or fully-customized assemblies, even complete drug and feeding pumps. Maxon does not shy away from cutting-edge technologies to solve the impossible motor control application.

Tom Salemi (14:48):

That's great. And I know Maxon's been involved in surgical robotics for a long time. Tell us a bit about that history and what are some current trends that you're seeing in robotics?

Peter van Beek (14:56):

Sure. Maxon has been supplied drive systems to surgical robotics industry since its inception, starting in the 1990s with the Stanford Research Institute Golden Hour robot. This is actually the precursor of the Da Vinci robot and that company. For the last 30 years, surgical robotic companies have been coming and placing their trust in Maxon worldwide, based on our design and development expertise. Be it a multiport, singular-port, catheter-based robotic system, we supply the haptic and end effector drives. In terms of current trends, drive assemblies have been pushed to a smaller physical footprint, which are more power-dense, efficient, quieter, and lower inertia, especially on the haptic side.

Tom Salemi (15:35):

That's great. Final question, Peter. What are some of the advantages for medical advice companies working with Maxon?

Peter van Beek (15:40):

Well, Tom, let's start with quality. We're accredited to quality standards ISO 9001 and 13485. We have familiarity with MDR and FDA regulations, and we can customers navigate that. Drug makers that bring projects to Maxon will have a benefit of working with engineers at the sales, project, and R&D levels. And in close collaboration with our customers, we develop drive systems tailored to the customer's specifications, using simple modifications or complex, fully-customized mechanisms. Be it a whole insulin pump, saline-tolerant drives, autoclavable options, hollow-shafted motors, adaptable gear boxes of all types and ratios, a battery of sensors and drive electronics for speed, torque and positional control.

Tom Salemi (16:26):

That's great. Thanks again to Maxon for supporting this episode of the MedtronicTalks podcast. For more information, go to maxongroup.us. Now, back into this conversation with Linnea Burman and Megan Rosengarten of Medtronic. So I'd like to understand a bit more as to how Medtronic is building your robotics platform. I know there's a big push of putting the tech and into MedTech and this is certainly a great example of that.

Tom Salemi (16:55):

I know that Mazor™ was an earlier acquisition in the space and Megan, you can hit upon the other acquisitions you made recently as well. But has Medtronic's move into robotics, has it been primarily or at least initially driven by acquisitions? I know you're developing Hugo™ internally, but walk me through how you're building this robotics capability. Linnea, if you could take that first.

Linnea Burman (17:18):

Sure. So I think what you see represented here is that we're willing to take a variety of approaches. And with Mazor™, Mazor™ had actually started in the early 2000s, around 2004. So they had a lot of experience in the market that we really saw as valuable experience and wanted to tap and jumpstart our position in this market. And once we decided that robotics was the path forward to improving outcomes and transforming spine care, we wanted to get there as fast as possible. So it started with a commercial agreement and then the acquisition occurred a couple of years ago. From here, the developments which are rich will be largely organic, but from time to time, I think as you've seen with the acquisition of Medicrea also in cranial and spinal technologies, we're willing to go outside when there's a differentiated technology that's maybe not in the wheelhouse of what we do really well. So I think you'll see a combined approach.

Tom Salemi (18:15):

And Megan, can you walk us through what's gone on internally with Hugo™ and let's talk a little bit about the acquisitions as well?

Megan Rosengarten (18:17):

Yeah. It's a fun story, one I'm privileged to have been there from the beginning of, so I do like to talk about the early days of Hugo™ before we named it Hugo™ where it was born out of a collaboration with a German aerospace and defense organization. And we had partnered with that organization called VLR in the very early days, go back 2012 or so, and we're working with them to partner on some robotic capabilities, technologies, and knowhow. And you fast forward to today we're on one of, if not the largest and most complex organic development projects within Medtronic and massively proud of that.

Megan Rosengarten (18:55):

Also, this comes with a lot of challenges to get here, but that theme of partnering with experts has been a very purposeful way that we've built new capabilities within Medtronic that now we're also looking at how do we plant seeds of those capabilities in other operating units. And that sort of gets us again from that 2012 and I remember our first prototypes were made out of plywood and we were doing that work, to where we are today was an amazingly fun journey.

Megan Rosengarten (19:25):

And the other piece that's added to that is this most recent acquisition of Digital Surgery was again, a very purposeful acknowledgement that we needed to augment not only our IP and our components, we needed to augment our capabilities. And that acquisition was as much, if not more, about a phenomenal team of people that we wanted to add to Medtronic to bolster our AI capabilities. So I think that's something that we'll continue to see and thinking strategically around, is it IP, is it products, is it people and talent? And doing that mix of bolstering our organic work with some inorganic plays in that way.

Tom Salemi (20:05):

This is a competitive space, where is Hugo™ at in its development and how will it eventually differentiate itself from others in the space?

Megan Rosengarten (20:15):

We're on the brink of our initial systems and our initial customers and we've shared publicly that we're coming up on some pretty important milestones this calendar year, so you'll see us commercialized this year which is really exciting. Like I said, given we've been in this... since the 2012 timeframe. One of the things that is important to think about with Hugo™ is that we went out after this with a really specific goal in mind, which was recognizing robotics had a pretty phenomenal run and place in the market, yet with that said, we're still less than 5% penetration in applicable surgeries around the world. And that's after 20 years and where we are. And we recognized that back in 2012 when we started, so we turned our sights to what are the barriers to entering robotic surgery today?

Megan Rosengarten (21:09):

And those barriers for surgeons, for patients, for administrators, why are more people not purchasing and using? And what can we design that is going to help to remove those barriers? So that's been the purposefulness of this system is to expand this market beyond the 5% you see today and bring the benefits of technology to more patients around the world.

Megan Rosengarten (21:31):

So some of the ways as to how that shows up with Hugo™, one is on the architecture. It's a modular system based on separate components, and on one hand that can see like, "Okay." That's, But it's pretty complicated both to pull that off and the reasons why behind that. And one of reasons and that we found as a barrier was the infrastructure and the footprint and the investment required for a hospital to embark on robotics all were complicated, costly, and high.

Megan Rosengarten (22:00):

And so, we did a lot of time to say, "Okay. Well, how do we bring you a technology that is flexible for how you want to use it? Do you want to use one robot arm, two, three, four? We can give you something that meets those needs." But then from hospital administrators, heard loud and clear, "Hey, please don't bring me a technology, especially an expensive one, that's going to be obsolete within two to three years." And we built that into the design of the system and that modularity that we can upgrade it as technology advances. So there's other pieces, but it's very squarely after that remove the barriers to purchase and use today.

Tom Salemi (22:38):

Interesting. Obviously, I can't go through every product you folks sell, but I'm wondering is this one of the larger systems you'd be selling in terms of space that it would take up in a place? I mean, normally you're developing really cutting-edge pacemakers or things that are implantable and small, this is not. Was it been a different approach?

Megan Rosengarten (22:56):

It has. Great question and note. We do have some products in Medtronic that we'd call large-scale capital equipment; O-arm™ is an example of this. But the vast of our portfolio are reusable or single-use devices or implantables. So this is a pretty major shift that has meaningful impact in multiple functions to become a large-scale capital equipment manufacturer, the complexity of how do you not only design, develop, market, and sell but install and service with excellence? So it's a pretty significant and fun journey to get there and I'm sure, Linnea, you have examples of that as well.

Tom Salemi (23:41):

Yeah. Thank you for handing it over for me. Linnea, I was going to ask, I mean you're actually selling a system at a time. I'd love to understand that managing a slightly different business, but in particular, I'd like to understand how it's being done in this time with COVID 19, hospitals under stress financially and in every other way. I wonder number one, how you are selling the Mazor™ system, but number two how has COVID 19 really impacted your work over the last year?

Linnea Burman (24:13):

Yeah. Yeah. Lots of stories to tell there, so great question. First of all, I'll say I've been at Medtronic for 20 years and spent the first 19 years in businesses with implantable types of technologies. And so, this has been a big shift for me to take on large capital and of course the OR that Megan mentioned is part of this portfolio, probably the largest piece of equipment that we manufacture and sell and service.

Linnea Burman (24:37):

So the last year has been very interesting. First of all, me making that transition to the mindset of large capital and all the things that go along with that, but also are the challenges, and you hit on a few of them. So from a sales perspective, just adapting to getting access to customers and doing that in new and different ways, supporting our field as they navigate the different restrictions that have come into play and flex throughout the year, capital budgets have been constrained, and so we've been much more flexible in our approach and ways that we offer the technology, and the agreements that we have out in the marketplace.

Linnea Burman (25:11):

And then, we talk about education and installation and getting access to accounts when we need to in different markets around the world, install this equipment. So I think education is one of the most interesting stories because you think about of itself, education is kind of an elective activity. But the whole pipeline stops if you stop the education process, and so we've really flexed that. Of course, we've converted like many companies, to a lot of digital and found it to be really effective in many ways, but there's still a need for hands-on training.

Linnea Burman (25:43):

And so, we have a fleet of trucks that we have taken and around the country for many years, and we are leaning on those more than ever and increasing the roadshow where we give physicians the opportunity to get their hands on. And that's a really key part of the training for them to either train or retrain and enhance their skills, or just to be exposed to it for the first time and decide if it's part of their offer at their hospital. Sometimes we even have administrators who come to check it out in that way, too, so that's been another way that we've flexed over the past year.

Tom Salemi (26:15):

And have you had difficulty getting into the hospitals, making those sales, just getting access to the hospitals? Day-to-day, what has it been like for you?

Linnea Burman (26:26):

Yeah. Our teams in the field, I think they have had access to the hospitals, but sometimes in different ways. And sometimes it's more over the phone or as we're doing here through Zoom, they're connecting with their physicians and the decision-makers in creative ways as well. But overall, the pipeline has kept moving and we're very optimistic about the future.

Tom Salemi (26:45):

Great. Well, let's wrap up looking forward and talking about that future. I feel like we're saying robotic surgery now, but it's going to be almost like online banking 10 years from now that I think it's going to be redundant. Am I being overly confident in that? Megan, what do you see the next five years looking like for robotic surgery with AI and the data you're mentioning. And maybe we can look a little bit beyond that if you're comfortable doing that.

Megan Rosengarten (27:14):

This is going to be one of the most rapid technology adoption stories. I think, we see in terms of robotics in the next five to 10 years, which will be a really amazing case study and point in history when we get 10 years in the future and look back. And I think that has to do with the amount of competition and investment that is pouring into robotics and healthcare is really unprecedented in the past 10 years, and that's starting to come to fruition. So I do think, to your point, just next five years crystal balling it, and I'm thinking 3-to-4x where we see today in terms of use of robotics and size of that market.

Megan Rosengarten (27:51):

In the next five years, I think if we continue, we're going to keep seeing a market and an adoption that's at a double-digit cadre for 10 years. So I think the story is just very nascent and the robotics of today and the robotics of five years is going to look pretty different than the robotics of 10 years. I have no doubt one of us marketers will coin a new phrase when it comes to that. And with that said, just looking at the time it takes to whole-sale adopt new technologies in medical devices, that is measured in decades.

Megan Rosengarten (28:31):

So I'm sure, just looking at laparoscopic surgery that we're still not a majority of procedures are lap versus open around the world. They will absolutely still be open and laparoscopic surgery, I say, should never speak in absolutes but in five years, I would say probably 10 years. But to your point, it will probably be less of a thing to call something robotic surgery versus just surgery.

Tom Salemi (28:56):

That's great. And Linnea, how about you? What do you see happening? And I don't know if you could speak to maybe internationally if you see other countries adopting this more quickly than we do, perhaps? What does the lay of that land look like going forward?

Linnea Burman (29:12):

Yeah. That's interesting. So first of all, like Megan, I do see this growing exponentially and that's why we're putting so much investment into it. Very optimistic about the value that it will continue to add. And so, you talked about putting the tech in MedTech, and this is one of the categories where I think we can do that really well. So as we continue to combine artificial intelligence, preoperative planning, really predictive modeling around the procedure, that's just going to demonstrate great value over time. And I think more and more physicians and hospitals will want to get in.

Linnea Burman (29:47):

With that, I think health systems are becoming attracted to it as well. It is growing rapidly in the United States and oftentimes we see growth here usually outpaces many countries, but this is a space where I'm seeing some excitement and competitiveness from other parts of the world where they also want to lead. So I think we'll see examples of that probably in China, and I'm seeing that in some countries in Europe as well.

Tom Salemi (30:11):

Excellent. Well, it's an exciting area to be involved with. I'm sure you both are excited to get on it every day and really grateful that you took time to tell your story on the podcast. Thanks for are joining us.

Megan Rosengarten (30:21):

Yes. Thank you.

Linnea Burman (30:22):

Thanks for having us, Tom, been great.

Tom Salemi (30:25):

Well, that is a wrap. Thank you for joining us on this episode of MedtronicTalks. Once again, this is Tom Salemi. I am Editorial Director of DeviceTalks. You can find me on Twitter @medtechtom. Please connect with me on LinkedIn, I'm there under Tom Salemi, S-A-L-E-M-I. And of course, you can find out more about the DeviceTalks platform at devicetalks.com. We have conferences virtual and someday in-person, and we have our DeviceTalks weekly podcasts. It's all there once again at devicetalks.com.

Tom Salemi (30:55):

But thank you for joining us on this episode of MedtronicTalks. We'll keep bringing you several of these each and every month, so just subscribe on Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Google, wherever you listen to your podcast, we're there. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a future episode of the MedtronicTalks podcast. Thanks, everyone.