An artificial cardiac pacemaker or pacemaker is a medical device that generates electrical impulses delivered by electrodes to the chambers of the heart either the upper atria, or lower ventricles to cause the targeted chambers to contract and pump blood. By doing so, the pacemaker regulates the function of the electrical conduction system of the heart.
Defibrillation is a treatment for life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, specifically ventricular fibrillation (V-Fib) and non-perfusing ventricular tachycardia (V-Tach). A defibrillator delivers a dose of electric current to the heart. Although not fully understood, this process depolarizes a large amount of the heart muscle, ending the arrhythmia. Subsequently, the body's natural pacemaker in the sinoatrial node of the heart is able to re-establish normal sinus rhythm. A heart which is in asystole (flatline) cannot be restarted by a defibrillator, but would be treated by cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
Wilson Greatbatch was an American engineer and pioneering inventor. He held more than 325 patents and was a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and a recipient of the Lemelson–MIT Prize and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1990).
Cardiac electrophysiology is a branch of cardiology and basic science focusing on the electrical activities of the heart. The term is usually used in clinical context, to describe studies of such phenomena by invasive (intracardiac) catheter recording of spontaneous activity as well as of cardiac responses to programmed electrical stimulation - clinical cardiac electrophysiology. However, cardiac electrophysiology also encompasses basic research and translational research components. Specialists studying cardiac electrophysiology, either clinically or solely through research, are known as cardiac electrophysiologists.
Boston Scientific Corporation ("BSC"), incorporated in Delaware, is a biomedical/biotechnology engineering firm and multinational manufacturer of medical devices used in interventional medical specialties, including interventional radiology, interventional cardiology, peripheral interventions, neuromodulation, neurovascular intervention, electrophysiology, cardiac surgery, vascular surgery, endoscopy, oncology, urology and gynecology. Boston Scientific is widely known for the development of the Taxus Stent, a drug-eluting stent which is used to open clogged arteries. With the full acquisition of Cameron Health in June 2012, the company also became notable for offering a minimally invasive implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) which they call the EMBLEM subcutaneous implantable defibrillator (S-ICD).
Guidant Corporation, part of Boston Scientific and Abbott Labs, designs and manufactures artificial cardiac pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, stents, and other cardiovascular medical products. Their company headquarters is located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Their main competitors are Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, and Johnson and Johnson.
Robert Samuel Langer Jr. FREng is an American chemical engineer, scientist, entrepreneur, inventor and one of the twelve Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
St. Jude Medical, Inc. was an American global medical device company headquartered in Little Canada, Minnesota, U.S., a suburb of Saint Paul. The company had more than 20 principal operations and manufacturing facilities worldwide with products sold in more than 100 countries. Its major markets include the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific. The company was named after Jude the Apostle, the patron saint of lost causes.
Robert Fischell is a physicist, prolific inventor, and holder of more than 200 U.S. and foreign medical patents. His inventions have led to the creation of several biotechnology companies. He worked at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory full-time for 25 years, and part-time for an additional 13 years. He contributed to APL's satellite navigation work, and later developed a rechargeable implantable pacemaker that could be programmed with radiowaves,. He and his team at Hopkins also helped miniaturize the implantable cardiac defibrillator. Mr. Fischell went on to invent the implantable insulin pump, numerous coronary stents used to open clogged arteries, and two feedback systems that provide early warning of epileptic seizures (NeuroPace) and heart attacks. Fischell recently donated $30 million to the University of Maryland College Park Foundation to establish a bioengineering department and an institute for biomedical devices at the A. James Clark School of Engineering.
Clinical cardiac electrophysiology, is a branch of the medical specialty of cardiology and is concerned with the study and treatment of rhythm disorders of the heart. Cardiologists with expertise in this area are usually referred to as electrophysiologists. Electrophysiologists are trained in the mechanism, function, and performance of the electrical activities of the heart. Electrophysiologists work closely with other cardiologists and cardiac surgeons to assist or guide therapy for heart rhythm disturbances (arrhythmias). They are trained to perform interventional and surgical procedures to treat cardiac arrhythmia.
Cardiac monitoring generally refers to continuous or intermittent monitoring of heart activity to assess a patient's condition relative to their cardiac rhythm. Cardiac monitoring is usually carried out using electrocardiography, which is a noninvasive process that records the heart's electrical activity and displays it in an electrocardiogram. It is different from hemodynamic monitoring, which monitors the pressure and flow of blood within the cardiovascular system. The two may be performed simultaneously on critical heart patients. Cardiac monitoring for ambulatory patients is known as ambulatory electrocardiography and uses a small, wearable device, such as a Holter monitor, wireless ambulatory ECG, or an implantable loop recorder. Data from a cardiac monitor can be transmitted to a distant monitoring station in a process known as telemetry or biotelemetry.
Dr. Thomas J. "Tom" Fogarty is an American surgeon and medical device inventor. He is best known for the invention of the embolectomy catheter, which revolutionized the treatment of blood clots (embolus).
Morton Maimon Mower was an American cardiologist specializing in electrophysiology and the co-inventor of the automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator. He served in several professional capacities at Sinai Hospital and Cardiac Pacemakers Inc. In 1996, he became the chairman and chief executive officer of Mower Research Associates. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002 for the development of the automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator with Michel Mirowski in the 1970s. He continued his research in the biomechanical engineering laboratories at Johns Hopkins University.
Alois A. Langer is an American biomedical engineer best known as one of the co-inventors of the Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD).
Marlin Stephen "Doc" Heilman is an American physician, entrepreneur and inventor. He is credited with inventions in the fields of contrast enhanced medical imaging, the first implantable cardioverter defibrillator or ICD, the first wearable defibrillator or LifeVest defibrillator, and heart assist devices. His first inventions, a flow controlled angiographic injector and pressure tolerant disposable angiographic syringes, advanced the fields of radiology and cardiology by improving the diagnostic image quality and eliminating the imaging risk of blood borne disease transmission from patient to patient. He founded Medrad Inc, now part of Bayer Healthcare, to manufacture and supply these imaging devices on a worldwide basis. In 2013, an estimated 65 million medical imaging procedures were performed using Medrad products.
Yossi Gross is an Israeli engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. He is a founding partner of Rainbow Medical, an operational investment company, established to launch companies based on the technological ideas and inventions of Gross. Yossi Gross first started his professional career in the 20th century as a project manager of the Lavi program for the Israel Air Force. From the 1990s through to the beginning of the 21st century, Gross started 27 medical device companies based on his various inventions in electronics, signal processing, nanotechnology, drug delivery and neurostimulation. Gross's various companies have developed or are currently developing treatments for diabetes, gastroenterology, stroke, ophthalmology, asthma, congestive heart failure, and urology. Gross has 567 filed patents.
A wearable cardioverter defibrillator (WCD) is a non-invasive, external device for patients at risk of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). It allows physicians time to assess their patient's arrhythmic risk and make appropriate plans. It is a leased device.
Biotronik is a limited partnership multi-national cardiovascular biomedical research and technology company, headquartered in Berlin, Germany.
Esther Sans Takeuchi is a materials scientist and chemical engineer, working on energy storage systems and power sources for biomedical devices. She is also a Distinguished Professor at Stony Brook University and a chief scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. She holds more than 150 U.S. patents. “The battery was invented once and reinvented over 100 times. I don’t own the patent. The company does. It was called Greatbatch. Now it’s called Integer Corp. When you join a company, you sign over your patent rights to the company.”
Yaariv Khaykin is a Canadian cardiologist and a clinical researcher in the area of electrophysiology. He is the director of the Newmarket Electrophysiology Research Group at the Southlake Regional Health Centre. He has published research into complex ablation and pioneered cardiac ablation methods.
