No Glass Ceilings: Medtech Women Gather at Unique Industry Meet-Up

MedtechWOMEN co-founders Amy Belt and Deborah Kilpatrick

Something new happened in the medical device world two weeksago. It wasn't a new technology or a big research discovery, nor was it a breakthroughtreatment for heart disease, cancer or diabetes, though it could possibly leadto one of these.  

What happened was an unprecedented medical technologyconference, featuring exclusively women speakers, panelists and attendees. Thesold-out Medtech Vision conference in Menlo Park, Calif. on September 15 and 16brought together more than 200 business executives, entrepreneurs, investors, physicians,inventors, providers, patient advocates, policymakers and regulators and generatedan energy that attendees claimed – and I will vouch -- was not just palpablebut electrifying.  

The idea was hatched a year ago when Covidien Ventures directorAmy Belt got fed up with the typical medtech meeting scene. "I was lookingup from the audience and realized that there were no women on the podium – again.I was frustrated not to see women on the podium, as well as on boards andexecutive teams, because I know the women experts are out there and I wanted tohear from them," Belt said. So she pulled together a like-minded group andset about, with major support from Covidien, Abbott Laboratories and law firm Fish &Richardson, to create something new.  

The invitation that landed in my inbox July 27 came from anew organization called MedtechWOMEN andpromoted the conference as "the first ever to highlight women on the forefrontof medical innovation." Intrigued, I anticipated speeches about glassceilings and male dominated C-suites. Boy, was I wrong. Instead, thepresentations and panel discussions proved true to the meeting's agenda: toidentify solutions to today's big challenges in medtech: a jittery venturecapital community, shifting models of care delivery and reimbursement, increasingregulatory demands, and laser-like attention to healthcare outcomes and costs.

Speakersset right to the task with pointed advice. On an investor panel, VersantVentures managing director Beckie Robertson advised against entrepreneurs workingon small projects. "The opportunity for a win-win is in meeting a hugeunmet need and getting out before commercialization," she said. Johnson& Johnson worldwide VP of new business development Susan Morano agreed,highlighting spectacular exits in the last two years for companies thatgenuinely responded to unmet needs. 

Among big populations with unmet needs are women themselves,noted Lynn Westphal, director of women's health at Stanford University.Westphal named several common diseases and treatments that are inadequatelystudied in women, explaining that females often display symptoms and respond totherapy differently than males. Imagine the opportunities, she suggested,awaiting companies that break the mold and extensively enroll women in largetrials for cardiovascular, cancer, diabetes and other diseases. 

Interventionalists and surgeons had their say, too. Surgicaloncologist Shyamali Singhal explained that for new technology to be adopted,"it has to be faster, easier, and more doable than what I'm doing now insurgery." And the designers of those new technologies need to interactmore with physician users, said Bonnie Weiner, a cardiovascular researcher,clinician and former president of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiographyand Interventions. "Nobody ever asks us how we're going to use the device.Come to the cath lab and follow us around!" 

On a reimbursement panel, speakers agreed that the days of"build it and they will come" are over, and the way forward is toimprove health outcomes or procedure workflow. "We look for clinicallymeaningful improvement in outcomes" backed by high-quality evidence, saidBetsy Thompson, chief medical officer for the San Francisco regional office ofthe Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Advancing patient safety isalso a good bet, she said: "If a new product improves safety but noteffectiveness, we would probably cover it." 

Liesl Cooper, VP of global healthcare economics, policy and reimbursementat Covidien, pointed out that with patients paying more for their care,industry also needs to think more about how to educate them. "We're notused to that," she said. "Shame on the medtech industry for nottouting better outcomes such as a 24-hour stay compared to a six-day stay!"

So what difference did it make that the people talking were allwomen? Amy Belt put it this way in her opening speech: "Leadership doesn'thave to wear a navy blue blazer. Women represent 51% of the population, 58% ofthe population over 65, spend two out of three healthcare dollars, are half ofthe graduating classes of physicians today and over 90% of all the registerednurses. Why would it make sense for women notto be significantly represented in leadership positions where key decisions aremade about the delivery of care and investment in innovation when theyrepresent half the population, control the healthcare dollar and provide themajority of healthcare services?"

Beyond Belt's introduction, though, the conference was notabout advancing women, but about advancing medical technology and healthcare. MedtechWOMENfounder Deborah Kilpatrick, a senior VP at diagnostics firm CardioDx, waspleased it went that way. Women's place in the industry "was just not whatwe were there to discuss," Kilpatrick said. 

Nevertheless, the thousand-watt energy at Medtech Vision wasa departure from the standard atmospherics of industry conferences. Itreflected, I think, the pride of 200 women medtech leaders seeing themselvesassembled in one place, listening closely to each other, making newconnections, and realizing – unexpectedly, inspiringly – that solving the challengesahead may suddenly have gotten a little bit easier. -- Mary Houghton