What a Millennial Thinks of Medtech's FutureWhat a Millennial Thinks of Medtech's Future

From equating success with benefiting the common good to an ease discussing wearables and other mobile health technologies, Arjun Venkatachalam is certainly a member of his generation. And he also happens to be one of the bright, rising engineering stars in the medical device industry.

Venkatachalam received the most nominations for inclusion in Qmed/MPMN's 30 under 30 roundup of medtech innovators. Now, the 23-year-old is an R&D engineer at NxStage Medical (Lawrence, MA). The company has designed a system that could enable some patients with end stage renal disease to perform hemodialysis in their homes instead of in an outpatient center. He was praised by a colleague as "[standing] out from the crowd, taking ownership of designing several key subsystems in a new product development effort" at the company. 

Venkatachalam will participate in the upcoming "Medical Device Masterminds Under 30" panel discussion at MD&M Minneapolis on Wednesday, October 29. At the event, he will give a presentation titled "Value Creation via the Art of Targeted Innovation," which will describe his philosophy for developing novel medical devices. In particular, the talk will discuss maximizing the efficiency of the concept and development phase.

We recently interviewed Venkatachalam to learn more about his background, his personal aspirations, and his thoughts on the industry--and everything from the uptick in bioengineering as a popular major for college students to wearables:
 

MPMN: How did you get involved in medtech?

Venkatachalam: I knew since high school that I wanted to work in the medical field whether that meant being a doctor and or an engineer actually designing the medical devices. That prompted me to major in biomedical engineering. I was fortunate to be able to have some technical in-depth internships and that experience guided me into the engineering aspect of medical devices.

I have friends who are mechanical engineers and biomedical engineers doing a wide array of jobs. And one of the things that really sticks out to me about medical devices is the way we help people with our products. I look forward to meeting patients whose lives I've affected with the medical device I am working on. This is something most other kinds of engineers don't get to do. But if I can help people live just a few years longer and see their grandkids a few more times, that makes it all worth it.
 

MPMN: Did the ability to help influence the lives of many people also help influence you to pursue medical device engineering?

Venkatachalam: The way I see it, a surgeon can help the people they operate on. But a device engineer has the potential to help people long after they are gone.
 

MPMN: The average age of a medical device engineer tends to skew older than in some other engineering fields. What are your thoughts on the industry's ability to attract younger engineers?

Venkatachalam: I think with the quickly expanding availability of biomedical engineering majors in universities combined with a steadily aging population makes it a fantastic time to go into the medical device industry.

In the past, there weren't a lot of opportunities to enter the industry very easily fresh out of college. Several of my friends ended up in the medical device industry only after working in different industries; it wasn't something that necessarily attracted them right out of school.

Still, there is a very large barrier to entry for new medical technologies, and rightfully so. You don't want something untested being used in a life-saving surgical procedure. That being said, it is tough for startups looking to innovate in this industry. I think it would great if the regulatory agencies had a better fast-track system to allow these innovative technologies to develop.

But in this day and age, health technology is on the forefront of many people's minds. It is being integrated into consumer technology with wearable electronics and there is a trend towards health tracking integrating with smartphones. All this bodes well for young people looking to get involved in the development of medical technology in general.
 

MPMN: Speaking of consumer-facing health technology, what do you think about Google and Apple entering the field?

Venkatachalam: The fact that two very high profile companies are entering the field says a lot. They are investing significant amount of money into healthcare. To me, it seems like Google is more serious about it than Apple at this point. Google has the glucose-sensing contact lens and they have made significant investments in the top-secret antiaging firm Calico.

GoogleX and Calico are where lots of hot-shot engineers want to work right now.
 

MPMN: How do you see the whole mHealth and wearables field influencing medtech?

Venkatachalam: As a medical device engineer, I see wearables providing a reasonably good source of preventative care in the sense that providing a constant diagnosis of health potentially heading off some serious problems--not necessarily as currently implemented though.

Right now, most trackers are looking at metrics like the number of steps you take, maybe your heart rate, and things like that. But I foresee as these technologies mature the development of things like a constantly wearable ECG that could let you know if you are experiencing a heart attack, which could automatically alert emergency services.

Brian Buntz is the editor-in-chief of MPMN and Qmed. Follow him on Twitter at @brian_buntz.

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