3 secrets of medtech success from a true industry pioneer

From stents to TAVR, Stanton Rowe has built a medtech legacy out of accomplishing the seemingly impossible. Here are three lessons from his career.

MDO’s executive editor Brad Perriello (left) interviews Stanton Rowe (right), chief scientific officer and corporate VP at Edwards Lifesciences, at DeviceTalks West, December 2017 in Orange County, Calif. “The impossible is the most fun you can have in medical device development,” Rowe said.

Stanton Rowe has played a major role in two of the top medtech innovation success stories of recent decades: stents and transcatheter valve replacements.

Listening to him speak at DeviceTalks West last month, it was obvious that his achievements come from being more than just a by-the-numbers businessman. Rowe, in fact, dared to do the impossible – an instinct he may have honed growing up in Huntsville, Ala., when it was the center of U.S. rocket development during the space race. Rowe’s father worked for the federal space agency as an engineer, he told Medical Design & Outsourcing Executive Editor Brad Perriello.

“The impossible is the most fun you can have in medical device development. Just go do the impossible. … Those are the things that really impact patients, too,” Rowe said during the event in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Now chief scientific officer and corporate VP at Edwards Lifesciences, Rowe is leading the development of the next generation of transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) technology – projected to be a $5 billion market by 2021. Transcatheter mitral and tricuspid valve replacement technologies under development could prove to be even more lucrative.

“We’re not just replacing these valves. In the tricuspid, in mitral, we’re repairing them,” Rowe said.

“Doing repair systems under fluoroscopic guidance and echo guidance is the next generation of these therapies, and it’s something to pilot,” Rowe said. “Their development is fraught with the same kind of challenges we had before, which makes it just a ton of fun.”

Go to our sister publication Medical Design & Outsourcing to discover three lessons from Rowe’s career that every medical device developer could take to heart.

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