Medtronic
Bakken Research Center

Medtronic founded the Bakken Research Center (BRC) in Maastricht in 1987, starting with
45 employees, as a research facility. Especially clinical study activities have grown substantially, now ranging from small exploratory studies with one physician-investigator and just a few patients to multinational, randomized trials intended to demonstrate superior clinical and economical outcomes with new device therapies in hundreds, sometimes thousands of patients. The BRC nowadays also hosts the Benelux Therapy & Procedure Training Center, where advanced simulator training is offered to physicians, nurses and technicians.

Clinical

Most of BRC’s 220 employees are designing and managing clinical studies, generating data for regulatory and reimbursement dossiers in Europe, Japan and the USA as well as generating scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals. The Medtronic Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management (CRDM) division is represented at the BRC by
three departments: Clinical Research, Clinical Operations, and Research & Technology. The Cardiovascular activities at BRC are also structured in
three departments: Coronary Vascular, Endovascular and Structural Heart Disease. CRDM Clinical Operations provides biostatistical and monitoring support to clinical groups also outside the BRC.

Innovation

About 30 scientists, engineers and technicians are working closely with medical innovators in mainly European hospitals and universities to develop, build and study new devices or methods to "alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life". In addition, the CRDM Research & Technology department designs and builds custom-made devices for CRDM as well for the Neuro and Diabetes Divisions, addressing the needs of individual patients according the specifications provided by a physician.

Services

Close to 50 linguistic specialists manage the translation of Medtronic’s product manuals and the texts on displays of our products into some
25 languages. About
25 quality and regulatory affairs professionals ensure that our products and services meet or exceed all applicable requirements inside and outside the EU, while the management team ensures that all
BRC employees recognize Quality and Service for patients and customers as their number one priority.