The Medtronic Foundation and Children's Heartlink Focus New Partnership on Health Equity for 10,000 Children and 10,000 Health Workers in Underserved Countries
April 07, 2021 at 09:00 am
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Medtronic Foundation and Children's HeartLink are announcing a $2.5 million, three-year, outcomes-based partnership to address congenital heart disease in children with a focus on reducing disparities in access to care and quality patient outcomes, and meaningful employee engagement. This partnership continues a rich collaborative legacy across the organizations, and is made in honor of Omar Ishrak, former chairman and CEO, Medtronic and former board member of the Medtronic Foundation, a true champion of impact driven philanthropy focusing on the underserved. Worldwide, the leading cause of death from a noncommunicable disease before age 30 is congenital heart disease. 90% of children born with heart disease don't have access to the care they need, and most of those children live in low- and middle-income countries. Specifically, the partners aim to actively address inequities in congenital heart surgery access and outcomes over three years by: Strengthening hospital capacity and training 10,000 health workers (pediatric surgeons, pediatric cardiologists, and nurses) to provide congenital heart disease surgery and quality outcomes for 10,000 children. Supporting CHL's strategic growth and innovation, enabling the organization to scale in underserved countries – doubling its impact between 2025 and 2030 by adding five new partner hospitals over the next 3 years. Reducing health disparities in access to care through a mixed method study with partner hospitals, revealing key differences by gender, income, and socioeconomic status of families, and developing site-specific equity dashboards to foster continuous quality improvement. Tapping Medtronic employees' skills and talents in domains such as clinical and medical education and training, technology development, market access, data science, and analytics.
Medtronic plc is one of the world leaders in designing, manufacturing and marketing of medical equipment. Net sales break down by sector of activity as follows:
- general and minimally invasive surgery (28.8%): surgical equipment, intra-operative monitoring systems, ventilation systems, etc.;
- cardiac rhythm management (18.6%): implantable cardiac pacemakers, implantable defibrillators and automatic external defibrillators, cardiac ablation probes, etc.;
- vascular diseases and cardiac surgery (17.4%): coronary stents, endoprostheses for aortal pathologies, distal protection systems, catheters, heart valve prostheses, auto-transfusion equipment, cardiac ablation devices, etc.;
- spinal disorders (14.1%): spinal prostheses, disc prostheses, cerebral stimulation systems, bone graft technologies and mini-invasive spinal surgery, etc. The group also develops medical imagery-guided surgical navigation systems activity;
- neurovascular, ear, nose and throat (ENT) and pelvic diseases (8.2%);
- diabetes management (7.4%): internal and external glycemia monitoring systems and insulin pumps;
- neurological disorders (5.5%): neurostimulation and pumped medication administration products, diagnostic tools, etc.
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: Ireland (0.3%), the United States (50.9%) and other (48.8%).
The Medtronic Foundation and Children's Heartlink Focus New Partnership on Health Equity for 10,000 Children and 10,000 Health Workers in Underserved Countries
MEDTRONIC PLC 
