Omar Ishrak: Former CEO of Medtronic (Raise the Line)

Hi, I'm Sh Ghani. Thanks for checking out the raise line interview series.

In which me and my cohost doctor Rishi Desai and registered nurse, Janna Amil, explore how to strengthen our healthcare system with some amazing leaders in medicine, technology, education and government and they have some great advice for people starting careers in healthcare as well.

I hope you will watch these highlights and then go listen to the full podcast interview wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Sh Glan and today on RA line, I'm really privileged to welcome Omar Esra, who's one of the most influential figures in medical technology and healthcare in the US and globally.

He earn that role in part by being chairman and CEO of Medtronic, the world's leading medical technology company from 2011 to 4020 but he was also president and CEO of GE Healthcare Systems.

Earlier in his career outside of healthcare, he serves as chairman of the board of Directors at Intel and is also on the boards of the Cleveland Clinic and Asia Society.

His tenure at Medtronic was marked by a focus on therapy, innovation, globalization, and economic value and he engineered the acquisition of Clavian a $10 billion global manufacturer of so surgical products and suppliers.

The largest medical technology acquisition in the history of the industry over the last decade, he was responsible for bringing to market a long list of innovations to improve the lives of millions of patients around the world and help healthcare systems become more efficient.

Can you start by telling us a bit about how you got into engineering first and then the career within business. Well, II got into engineering because I took a degree in electrical engineering, which um you know, I just felt I wanted to do.

And from that, I did a phd actually in uh in the area of ultrasound imaging and, and that then um took me into business in the beginning, I wanted to do uh research but very quickly, I realized that I uh wanted to know the impact that that research would have on a product and then on on patients and people and what value it would create for a company.

And so that um over time connected me with uh with, with customers and with business and, and, and that's how I eventually grew.

Given our audience is uh comprised primarily of students and early career health professionals. What's your advice to them about meeting the challenges of the COVID-19 uh moment and approaching their career in health care, I think focusing on patients and that the the role is uh uh of the the physicians and, and the people in the healthcare industry is to improve people's lives.

You know, one must never forget that, that, that, that link to an outcome as opposed to an intermediate endpoint is important.

You know, the other thing that is uh also important is this notion of working together with others. But at the same time recognizing that health care is a granular effort, you have to understand the details, you have to understand them in, in in extreme depth and you can build an entire career, an entire lifetime on just focusing on one thing.

And uh you know, one should never forget that. Now to scale things, you may need to add things together at a different level.

Um I understand and things can have side effects, you need to understand about other things. But uh what's really struck me is uh how uh how focused really one has to be to really move the needle in health care.

So these two things, um I would uh I would leave with the audience. Um But as the, you know, so think about the careers in healthcare, I can remember these.

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