Medtronic is deepening its engagement with India through a new critical-care collaboration with Apollo Hospitals in Hyderabad that will serve not only as an advanced intensive care unit but also as a real-world environment for developing and evaluating medical technology. For readers not familiar with Apollo Hospitals, it is the largest corporate hospital chain in India. I met Founding Chairman Dr Pratap Reddy at the home of the Indian Ambassador to the United States several years ago and at his invitation visited their sites in Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi.
Medtronic and Apollo have opened an 11-bed ICU at Apollo Hospitals’ Jubilee Hills campus equipped with Medtronic’s Acute Care & Monitoring technologies. The facility brings together patient monitoring, digital technologies and clinical expertise in an operating hospital setting.
For Medtronic, the project has an important product-development component. The company says its engineers and technology teams will use experience from the ICU to better understand clinical needs and help inform the development of future critical-care technologies for India and other markets. For context, Medtronic’s Engineering and Innoation Center is located in Hyderabad, and was initially established with guidance from my team and me for Coviden, which merged with Medtronic.
Jason Case, Medtronic’s Vice President of R&D for Acute Care Monitoring, described the Hyderabad ICU as a “real-world innovation hub” where technology developers can work alongside healthcare professionals.
That makes the initiative somewhat different from a conventional medical equipment installation. Rather than simply supplying monitoring systems to Apollo, Medtronic is creating an environment in which its technology can be used and evaluated as part of day-to-day critical care.
The collaboration is also notable because of Medtronic’s substantial existing engineering presence in Hyderabad. The company’s Medtronic Engineering & Innovation Center (MEIC) is now one of its important research and development operations outside the United States. Senior MEIC engineering executives participated in the inauguration of the new ICU alongside global leaders from Medtronic’s Acute Care Monitoring organization.
Apollo brings a large clinical environment to the relationship. The Indian hospital group operates 76 hospitals with more than 10,400 beds, giving it experience treating patients across a wide range of specialties and clinical settings.
The new ICU is intended to explore how monitoring systems and digital tools can provide clinicians with more useful information about critically ill patients. In intensive care, large quantities of physiological data are generated continuously, creating opportunities to use connected systems and software to help clinicians recognize changes in a patient’s condition and make treatment decisions.
Medtronic’s India leadership said insights generated through the project could help inform technologies for clinicians both in India and elsewhere. That is an important distinction in how multinational medical technology companies increasingly approach the country.
India has traditionally been viewed by Western medical device manufacturers primarily as a market for products developed in the United States or Europe. Projects such as the Hyderabad collaboration point toward a broader role: Indian hospitals and clinicians can also participate in the development, testing and refinement of technologies intended for global use.
For Medtronic, that model combines its engineering capabilities in Hyderabad with access to a large and sophisticated clinical environment. The new Apollo ICU therefore represents more than another installation of American medical technology in India. It provides an example of how India is becoming integrated into the innovation and product-development activities of one of the world’s largest medical device companies.
