Medical device giant Medtronic has been talking to officials in IDA Ireland about further expanding its footprint in Ireland.
It comes as the business agreed a €5 million five-year partnership with the University of Galway to support innovation in the sector in a move that is seen as reinforcing the city’s standing as Ireland’s medtech hub.
“We’ve looked strategically around the world on where we locate our R&D and our manufacturing,” chief executive Geoff Martha said. “They’re distinct strategies but they are linked where we can and Ireland ranks really high. In our business, scale helps and so Ireland is something we are going to continue to look to expand.”
The latest investment formalises and deepens a long-standing relationship between the world’s largest medical device company, which is US-based but domiciled in Ireland and the university.
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Mr Martha said it involved three distinct pillars. The first aims to deepen Ireland’s medtech ecosystem, which is already centred on Galway. This will include rapid prototyping of devices and a greater focus on the generation of clinical evidence “not just for Medtroninc but for the country and the medtech ecosystem”.
He highlighted the potential for innovation in the manufacturing end of the industry.
“With the pressure on prices and healthcare system costs, we have got to be able to manufacture our products more efficiently but you cannot cut corners on safety,” Mr Martha said, noting that Ireland is the global supplier of its coronary stents and many other stent products. The company says it manufactures 12,000 stents a day here.
“There is a lot of innovation in automating that so you can do it efficiently because we are now stenting people in rural India and rural China, so cost really matters and we have to be able to get that without sacrificing quality, do it efficiently and do it at scale. And that takes real innovation and that’s another area of innovation here in Ireland.”
The company is also keen to expand Stem [science, technology, engineering and maths] education initiatives with which its own staff are already heavily involved right the way through the education system from primary school level.
The partnership will also help fund the recently establish Institute for Clinical Trials, based at the university, and a planned institute focusing on medical technologies and advanced therapeutics.
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It was announced at an event at National University of Ireland in Dublin, which was attended by Mr Martha, the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris and University of Galway president Prof Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh.
Prof Ó hÓgartaigh said the partnership would be “transformative, ensuring Galway is attractive to global talent and advancing and accelerating basic and applied medical technologies research at the highest level to help more patients”.
The university said the investment would offer access to early-stage seed funding for new collaborative research projects.
Mr Harris said the campus-wide partnership would “help to launch bold new initiatives that will have significant impacts for Galway, Ireland and the world”.
Mr Martha said he had had discussions with the IDA during this week’s visit “about expanding into other things, having our centre of gravity for other types of research and development in Ireland as well”.
“One of the crucial tenets of the Medtronic mission is to foster good citizenship, and we hope that this investment with University of Galway in Ireland’s workforce, research, community and education will pave the way for long-term, meaningful effects on patient outcomes and economic growth,” Mr Martha said.
“Medtronic has a wealth of technologies at our disposal, but we can’t do it alone: a highly-educated and skilled workforce is critical to pioneering the treatments of tomorrow.”
The company employs more than 4,000 people across five sites in Ireland – two in Galway, two in Dublin and one in Athlone. Galway accounts for about 3,000 of the employees.
