Emerging Technologies for the Management of Cardio-Vascular Health

Abstract

When we refer emerging technologies, we mean, -the state of-the-art technologies, that are developing at the time of this writing. However, for someone who has completed half a century of research related to heart and vascular health, cutting edge technologies are ever evolving and to a great extent, responsible for the tremendous improvements made in cardiovascular research in the last few decades. In view of the rapidity in which the novel technologies are innovated and implemented, it is hard for 
scientists, clinicians, and researchers, to catch up with emerging technologies. Furthermore, there is a great disconnect between the innovator, product developer, research scientists, clinicians and the end users. When I started working at the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1970, Earl Bakken (Founder of Medtronic Inc, Minneapolis, MN) and Professor Walton Lillehei (Founder of St. Jude’s Medical Inc, MN), had already developed a novel, fully implantable pacemaker. Fifty years of improvement in the original device resulted in the development of Medtronic heart pacing device, not much larger than a silver dollar, with the battery that lives close to a decade. Today’s pacemakers weigh little more than an ounce and can be checked remotely via phone every few months, to verify a patient’s heart rate and rhythm and evaluate the device’s function and remaining battery life. Furthermore, all pacemaker vendors now have FDA-cleared MRI compatible pacemakers. During early days, there was extensive collaboration between the Academia and Industry in such developmental work. If one does an internet search, for the top ten biomedical innovations, one can see prominently a list of innovations that the Cleveland Clinic has posted, which include: hybrid closed-loop insulin delivery system, neuromodulation to treat obstructive sleep apnea, gene therapy for inherited retinal diseases, unprecedented reduction in LDL-cholesterol, the emergence of telemedicine, next generation vaccine platforms, arsenal of targeted breast cancer therapies, 
enhanced recovery after surgery, centralized monitoring of hospital patients, and scalp cooling for reducing chemotherapy-induced hair loss. The area of medical innovation that is conspicuously missing in this list is the phenomenal developments in the area of cardio-valvular and cardiovascular research and their applications [1]. The field of cardiovascular medicine is rapidly evolving in pace with the advances in technology and engineering. For instance, cardiac pacing, has seen a s