This article is based on our recent webinar, Implantable and Wearable Medical Devices - A Fundamental Shift to Digital Health Services and Connected Ecosystems of Care, featuring Jim O’Donoghue, President, S3 Connected Health, and Paul Mearns, Sr. Software Engineer Director, Medtronic, who discussed what this shift means in practice for medtech companies, from developing connected capabilities alongside the device to integrating them into clinical workflows and connecting across a broader healthcare ecosystem.
For implantable and wearable medical devices, connectivity creates opportunities to extend value beyond the device's core function. The shift does not mean moving away from device innovation, but rather recognizing that the value of connected devices increasingly depends on what happens around them.
For monitoring devices, data alone provides little benefit unless it leads to meaningful action. Whether that action involves a clinician adjusting treatment, a patient modifying behavior, or care teams identifying emerging risks, the connected solution becomes integral to delivering clinical outcomes.
Therapeutic devices such as neurostimulation implants deliver value directly through treatment, but they also rely on connected ecosystems to monitor effectiveness, support remote therapy adjustments, and provide visibility to both patients and clinicians.
As medtech companies make this transition, the challenge is determining how and when to develop these wider capabilities, and what role they should play within the connected care ecosystem. In this article, we share key takeaways from the webinar.
Paul Mearns spoke about Medtronic's Patient Care Systems organization to provide a real-world example of what this evolution can look like at scale.
More than three million people are already connected through its CareLink platform, with data flowing from implanted cardiac devices back to their care teams. The wider ecosystem includes implant tools, programmers, bedside monitors, mobile applications, data platforms, and clinical workflows.
But that connectivity isn't valuable simply because it generates more data.
Connected devices can provide detailed and continuous insight into a patient's condition. However, making more data available to clinicians does not necessarily improve care. Information needs to reach the right people, at the right time, and in a form that can support a clinical decision.
“Insight trapped inside a system, delayed by workflows or buried in noise, really doesn’t help anyone.”
Paul Mearns, Sr. Software Engineer Director, Medtronic
Rather than adding dashboards or requiring time-poor clinicians to monitor ever-growing volumes of device data, connected systems need to identify and surface the information that requires attention. As device data becomes richer and cloud and AI capabilities develop further, this distinction will become increasingly important.
For patients, continuous connectivity can also change the care experience. Monitoring no longer has to depend entirely on what happens during an individual appointment. Data can continue to flow as patients return to their everyday lives, creating the potential for a more continuous connection between the patient and their care team. Delivering that experience, however, requires companies to consider the wider connected solution alongside the device itself.
One strategic question for medtech companies is how early the wider connected ecosystem should influence product development.
Device programs already have significant clinical, regulatory, quality, and engineering requirements. For smaller companies in particular, proving the core technology may understandably consume much of the early investment and development effort.
However, the product's eventual commercial and clinical value may depend on capabilities outside the device itself.
“If you leave the digital solution focus and the ecosystem part too late, then that can delay your time to revenue and maybe your business case isn’t as clear as it should be.”
Jim O’Donoghue, President, S3 Connected Health
This creates a balancing act for development teams. Not every part of the future ecosystem needs to be built at the start of a program, but teams need enough visibility into the longer-term destination to make informed decisions about the device and its surrounding architecture.
As connected portfolios develop, the strategic questions extend beyond how an individual device connects to a manufacturer's own platform.
Patients may use devices from multiple manufacturers, interact with several healthcare providers and live with more than one condition. Clinicians, meanwhile, need information to fit into the systems and workflows they already use.
The longer-term direction therefore raises questions around interoperability between companies, technologies and infrastructures. It also raises a more fundamental portfolio question for medtech companies: which parts of this ecosystem should they own, and where should they integrate or partner?
“These are strategic challenges that are going to come up, particularly for the large companies, in terms of thinking about what their position in the ecosystem is and what their part of the value system is.”
Jim O’Donoghue, President, S3 Connected Health
The opportunity may be to build services closely around the device, develop a broader connected platform, integrate into existing care infrastructure, or enable other providers to use the data generated by the technology.
Those decisions will increasingly influence future portfolio strategy and innovation roadmaps. They determine not only what to develop next, but also which capabilities must exist internally, where partnerships are needed, and how a company expects to differentiate as connected care evolves.
Connected ecosystems are already a reality for implantable and wearable medical devices. The next phase is about how those ecosystems develop and how effectively they fit into broader healthcare delivery.
For medtech companies, this means looking beyond connectivity as an individual product feature. The questions are becoming broader: how will device data be used, how will it fit into clinical workflows, what services should surround the device, and how will those services connect with technologies and care systems outside the company's own portfolio?
The device will remain at the center of that strategy. But long-term growth and differentiation may increasingly depend on having a clear view of the ecosystem around it, and building the roadmap, capabilities, and partnerships needed to operate within it.
To dive deeper into these insights and gain expert guidance, access the full webinar now. Hear from our panelists who discuss why connected ecosystems of care represent the next evolution of implantable and wearable device portfolios.