Name: Innovation Forum 2024: How Ai Will Supercharge Medical Devices
Uploaded: 2024-03-28
Duration: 15 min 58 s
Description: Geoff Martha, Chairman And Ceo, Medtronic In Conversation With Jo Ling Kent, Cbs News

Geoff Martha, Chairman And Ceo, Medtronic In Conversation With Jo Ling Kent, Cbs News

Innovation Forum 2024: How Ai Will Supercharge Medical Devices

Conferences

Geoff MARTHA, Chairman and CEO, Medtronic In conversation with Jo Ling KENT, CBS News


Jeff, thank you for being here. Really appreciate it. Yeah, it's good to be here. Well, you're here on a big Asia Swing Whirlwind tour. Whirlwind tour. But I have to say, first and foremost, I am from the great state of Minnesota. You are running a Minnesota company and it takes us Hong Kong to get together. I love it. Um So you're on this Asia Swing, you just came from Beijing. You were at the China Development Forum. How was it? Well, I'd say it was very, uh I'd say very insightful. Uh you know, uh Premier Lee has addressed uh uh a cross section of multinational CEO S about the economy, about the business environment, about where they're going. And you know, a couple takeaways that I had was one, they have a lot of confidence in, in where they're going with the economy. I know the the growth has been low, lower historically than historical growth in China. But they're, they're, the Chinese government is very clear uh that they're what they call new productive forces that are driving the economy in a healthier way. So they don't want to do a big stimulus like you saw in the western world in Europe and us. Uh they don't wanna overly rely on commercial real estate, which they've done in the past and they really want to transition to more of a tech economy. And then they're investing in tech ev life sciences, which medical technology is a part of that. Uh And they were very clear that the um you know, that it's an open environment for multi multinational companies. So it was, it was good to hear that you were encouraged by it. I was encouraged. Well, that's exciting because, you know, Medtronic has had a challenging few years in, in terms of China, but a lot of companies have and I know that there are plans to expand, you already have a major presence in China. And so I want for the audience's purposes like paint the picture of what Medtronic is in China and your, you know, your five year goal for sure. Uh Yeah, so we have a big presence in China. We, we've been there 35 years since our 35th, the company is 75 years old. We've been in China for 35 years. We really helped pioneer the medical technology market in China. And don't just think we always, we take our latest and greatest technology in China. Um but we also uh and, and sell that and help, you know, help a lot of patients, but we also train a lot of physicians. Uh We do the Chinese health care system is a bit different. They don't have uh residencies and fellowships that you see in Europe and the US and other parts of the world. Um After the Chinese doctors graduate medical school, many of them rely on the Metronic to train them on the latest and greatest. So we've trained hundreds of thousands of, of doctors. We have two big training centers, one in Shanghai, one in Chengdu, a little further west. We have um R and D there for the world R and D for products that are designed for China. We have manufacturing there mostly for China. We don't, we don't have a big reliance on supply chain there. It's more in China for China. So it's a, it's a big presence and we've, you know, helped the Chinese government evolve the ecosystem, the healthcare ecosystem. We also have two venture funds there that we invest in local uh start up companies as you think about, you know, you're back to double digit growth in China as of your last quarterly earnings. That was good to see. And you're also aggressively investing and deploying A I products. And I was wondering, you know, you've got Medronic has what you said 7775 years of medical data and you're using that to inform A I models for surgery, endoscopies. Am I saying that right? Endoscopies? Yeah, thank you. Um You know, all kinds of really essential technology for people's health and So we have something we wanna share with everyone. And if your gig and it's a video that we wanna run to show how Metronic is using A I to detect polyps in colonoscopies. And I don't know if we can pull that up. Now, please to show the audience, you know what, how this Metronic technology works. Do you guys have the video? OK. Well, there it is. OK, everyone. We're going into a colonoscopy. So this is, this is a colonoscopy. That's what when a physician is doing a colonoscopy, they're doing it through a camera, right? And the camera goes, you know where and on the left, you see the, the colonoscopy without G I genius. And on the right, you see it with G I genius. That green box is really highlighting for the physician, a polyp and these polyps have a high propensity to turn into cancer. And as you can see from the difference from the left to the right, it's hard to see that polyp, I mean, and these G I docs, these gastrointestinal, they're doing 8 to 10 of these colonoscopies a day. And even if they're fully alert and fresh, they still miss these, but as the day goes on, they get their eyes get tired, they miss even more. And so we found in our clinical research that 26% of polyps are missed in a colonoscopy 26 26%. And that drives a lot of uh cancer. And so with this technology, you know, we're, we're picking those up. It's about 99.9% sens sensitive and 99.9% specific meeting. We see it almost all the time, virtually all the time. And we, we don't have false alarms, false alerts like uh and so we've to get to this, we, we trained our a deep learning algorithm with 13 million colonoscopy videos uh to train that algorithm in order to get this technology and it weaves right into the surgeon workflow. It's just a great example of how A I is improving health care. And this is a big cancer, cancer prevention play. And uh we're really excited about this. Well, what's really remarkable about this technology is that colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer worldwide. And so I don't know if you know the answer to this question, but how many lives do you think this technology has saved or will save? Oh, it'll be hundreds of thousands and it's quickly becoming the standard of care in the US right now. It's still under 10% because it's brand new, but it's growing quickly. Uh And uh you know what we, and we've done consumer research on this patient research and we're finding that, you know, you know, as you know, there's some mixed views on A I people are nervous about it, probably this that but when it comes to their health, they would much rather have an A I colonoscopy than a non A I colonoscopy. They would, much patients would much rather do, uh, an A I guided surgical, you know, um, a procedure than non A I guided. Now, what they're not comfortable with is the surgeon or the physician going away. But they do want the, the idea of A I making that surgeon better. And so it's basically giving the surgeon even more capability and strength and accuracy. It's doing a couple of things. Yeah, it, it's, it's helping them sort through complex data faster. Uh And I can give you other applications but it's also helping them identify patterns. Um And it's, it's um tho those are big ones and it's, it's in surgical and surgeries. It's, it's almost like a driver assist technology in the or so that's better outcomes and you're actually personalizing some therapies over time as well. So knowing the success of G I genius, what comes next for you? Like, how are you using this innovation to power other types of medical A I technology? So look this, we have five FDA approved, we're doing most of this right now in the US and Europe, we're not doing this in China yet. We have to set a separate A I platform in China. We'll work on that. But um you know, we're using this in cardiology, we're using this in, in neuroscience. Uh we're using it in diabetes. So a couple of examples, we have A uh for type one diabetics, we have an A I algorithm that, you know, predicts where the sugar is going to go and helps and helps the, the our technology, the insulin pump uh determine when, when the dose insulin and how much and and is really improving diabetics time and range uh kind of an acceptable blood sugar range that, that has meaningful long term outcomes for patients. We're using it, like I said, in surgeries to, to like take spine surgery, very complicated surgery. We have a I guided surgical plans because surgeons were doing all this math in their head. Your spine is a complicated kind of load bearing part of your body and you change one part of it. It has big implications. The A I is helping them determine what to do and then it guides them throughout the surgery. We're using A I to detect arrhythmias, uh heart arrhythmias. So for a that, you know, heart arrhythmias can cause a FB that causes stroke. Uh And so these are some areas that we have already FDA approved uh A I driven uh technology. So it's very exciting and, and we want to scale this to, to all of our areas and and beyond. And as you scale and you have these big hopes to bring this technology here to Asia to China. How do you address the concerns about data security and these sort of concrete but sometimes nebulous worries about the dark side of A I in our health. Well, it's, it's a great question and like, look what I see. I'm an optimist. I see all the upside here, but I get the point you're making. So we've set up uh what we call our own A I compass, which are basically guiding principles uh around things. Like you're talking about data, privacy and security and transparency and what we call beneficial use. You're using it for the good of humankind. And we, but we put that together based on our interactions, we're continually engaging with the, with the ecosystem. So physicians, health care systems, governments regulators because there's no one overarching regulation yet for A I, it will get regulated at some point. But, but we can't wait for that. We've got to do it ourselves. We definitely can't wait on the US. Government to regulate. You know, we've got to do it ourselves. And you know, I, you know, I heard Sarah Malton say the other day, he's, he was inviting regulation in the space. Um Yeah, but we're, we're not waiting for that. We're working with stakeholders, anybody that will uh engage with us on this and, and continue evolving our, what we call our A I companies. So then talking about regulation, you know, you have this Senate A I forum happening in the US. Uh We were on this very same stage yesterday talking about A I regulation in Asia as a multinational company that is working so heavily in China and obviously in the US, what's your hope for A I regulation? Where should, what should the first step be? Well, if you're talking about uh you know, the security concerns, um I look, we're, we're, we're planning for that, we're planning for because these, this is A I is developed on, on local like patient data. Uh And I think when it comes to China specifically, as we expand all what I just showed, talked about to China, we're going to have to use do that on China patients data in conjunction with the government. And it's something I talked about with the Chinese government this past week. I mean, they're very keen to do it, but we're gonna have to do it on a separate platform in China and keep them separate. But the learnings that we got from what, what we're doing in the US and Europe, we can apply those learnings. But the data, the models will have to be customized for Chinese patients and Chinese healthcare systems and kept in China as we sit here and look at the next five or 10 years for medtronic in China. What's your 10 year horizon and your ambitions for what medtronic is able to accomplish in China? And I know you do business also in Japan and elsewhere. We anyway, there's people, we, we're there, we're there. Uh And uh but China is a big market for us and we're very proud of what we've accomplished over the last 35 years. And like I said, you hear it in the Chinese government officials, uh even the, the health care officials, but even just like the Ministry of Commerce, they're very appreciative of what we've helped them with. And um but, but I think the next 35 years we're going to have to, to remain competitive in China, we're going to have to localize, we're gonna have to look, we import China relies on the US uh for its advanced medical technology by and large. And um but they're, they have a burgeoning uh MedTech ecosystem and these companies are going to make products customized for c higher volume local supply chain, lower cost. Uh We're gonna have to, to do that. And, and so I think localization is gonna be a big piece. How do you localize that? You have to set up uh that infrastructure on the ground R and D? So what we call marketing people that work with the physicians and the hospitals? What do you really want? What features are you prioritizing? You have to have your R and D team to, to work with them to develop these technologies and, and, and manufacturing uh to, to, to make it also a local supply supply chain. Uh So all of that has to be localized. We have done it for parts of the company, but it's still a vast minority. We've got to do it for a much broader swath of our, of our products or technology. We have two minutes left and I was wondering if anyone had a question. If you wanted to raise your hand, we'll get a mic over to you. Any questions from the audience, I'll let you guys think on it for a second. I think going when you look at how artificial intelligence is impacting your overall strategy, you've been now in a CEO CEO role for three years. Draw me the contrast when you started, what were you thinking about when it came to A I strategy versus now as you look forward, you know, when I, when I started, when did the switch flip or maybe you already flipped before you got the job, you know, right out of the gate. I had the opportunity to meet with the heads of the big tech companies, you know, Google Apple, et cetera, one on one, they came and spoke to our employees and, and that having that kind of direct interaction uh really stuck with me in terms of the opportunity and that they basically were saying in different words, but you have an opportunity because you have that 75 years of data to shift the company from strictly a product company to more of a data company. We're not getting out of products. I mean, we make devices, surgical tools, robotic, surgical, yeah, we're not gonna get out of that business, but the the value creation for the company was, is all there today. Mainly it's going to shift to balance between value creation from the devices and the equipment to also the data. So we're going to become more, we're becoming, we are becoming more of a data company. Uh and that swings to hit me pretty early in, in, in my tenure and we've been working towards that not understanding how to basically turn that data into better health care outcomes and, and business models as well. We have a lot of executives and CEO S in the audience and I wonder from your position of great influence in A I and, and health care technology. What's your advice to other executives across industries when it comes to embracing but also managing how A I affects your business and your customers. I think you, I think you need to lean into it hard, first of all and personally, you know, you know, personally and play with them, uh you know, chat G BT and these things, you know, it, it was in conjunction with your it team. They'll tell you we have our own Metronic chat GP T but, but also engage with the different stakeholders. I've learned so much like I said, talking to the tech companies, talking to other companies in different industries in terms of how they're A I in their offerings to their, to their customers, but also internally to drive efficiencies. So that for me has been the biggest thing is actually playing around with it myself a little bit and seeing the power but but engaging with others as many people as will talk to me about this and I learned so much from talking to other companies and, and the tech companies as well. Jeff Martha, thank you for bringing insights from Beijing and CD F here to Hong Kong and I really appreciate all your time. Maybe next time we'll be together in Minnesota. Yeah, that sounds good. I'll see you, see you on Lake Min. That would be great. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.