Partner customers are leveraging the R&D team’s more than 120 years of combined expertise
NEW HOPE, Minn., June 20, 2024 – VitalPath designs and manufactures custom, highly complex catheter solutions for medical device OEMs. The company specializes in meeting customers’ most challenging requirements, such as single or multidirectional deflection, pushability, kink resistance and torque response. Serving customers in the electrophysiology, structural heart, neurovascular, peripheral vascular, left ventricular assist, intracoronary, intravascular lithotripsy and renal denervation, VitalPath is the culmination of three distinct catheter manufacturing companies formerly known as VitalDyne Medical, Catheter & Medical Design, and Modern Catheter Technologies.
In 2022, keeping their vital customer’s needs and patient’s lives top of mind, the companies came together with an important strategic Vision to become One VitalPath and create—for their customers and team members—the most impassioned, trusting, and caring experience in complex catheter development and manufacturing. As part of the journey to achieving that vision, the team is pushing the boundaries and offering sophisticated performance characteristics that set their complex catheters apart and empower physicians to navigate challenging anatomy with unprecedented precision. Leading that team is industry veteran, Scott Larson as Chief Engineering Officer, who joined the company in Fall of 2023.
Scott brings more than 30 years of experience in Medical Device and Contract Manufacturing at Spectrum Plastics, TE Connectivity, Olympus, and Boston Scientific. His results-oriented global
leadership in R&D, Program Management, and Operations makes him a natural fit for VitalPath where the ability to lead cross functionally is imperative to deliver for vital customers. His Engineering leadership team including Kate Soojian, Chao Vang, Joe Yang, and Tom Brinkman have more than 90 years of complex catheter development experience between them.
“I am thrilled to lead this impressive team of engineers. Their decades of catheter development expertise, project management, and ability to problem solve with customers is unmatched. Complex Catheters is our specialty, and we do what others can’t because of our dedicated team. I am very excited for what’s next at VitalPath as we continue to partner with customers in our Design Centers in New Hope and Cokato. I know I speak for the entire team when I say how passionate we are about acting as an extension of our customer’s engineering teams to aid in their design process, perform rapid prototyping, and quick iterations in order to speed their time to market,” says Scott Larson, Chief Engineering Officer.
Since Scott has joined the organization, he has worked with the team to formalize the stage gate product development process to improve the customer journey. Customers interact with a single point of contact to coordinate all activities through the project management process from concept through design transfer.
The organization is also well known by customers for their engineering expertise and their unique ability to be nimble and flexible in response to rapidly changing requirements that many OEMs face early in their product development process. In fact, the team has extensive experience managing and supporting FDA Early Feasibility Study (EFS) Projects to quickly get customers into clinical studies. Recently, a customer came to the team with an issue that they were experiencing related to liner material. With the customer expressing that this was their highest priority, engineering was onsite in Maplewood building iterations, procurement and the warehouse team helped locate necessary materials, and the machine team lent a hand on braider setup, while customer service was in close contact throughout. As a result of the cross-functional and cross-site collaboration, VitalPath was able to turn around 2 iterations of 6 pieces each within a record 4 days!
“ We have assembled a company of great leaders and team members that care deeply about our customers and their requirements for complex functionality that simple catheters just can’t deliver. At VitalPath, we are investing heavily to enable the quick-cycle innovation needed to help our customers gain a competitive advantage in the markets they serve. Scott Larson and the team he is leading, is an important part of that competitive advantage and I am thrilled to have him be part of our team,” commented Andrew Holman, CEO.
VitalPath has more than 350 employees at four Minneapolis area locations. Featuring ISO 7 & 8 cleanrooms, the company has FDA registered sites and is ISO 13485:2016 certified. In addition to speeding customers’ time to market through design and development, the catheter manufacturer is also uniquely positioned to consolidate supply chains with vertically integrated capabilities to bring complete complex catheters to market for vital customers. Their comprehensive suite of capabilities support complex component manufacturing with laser cutting, welding, ablation, forming and bending, catheter development and assembly with extrusion, braiding, and coiling as well as finishing and value add with tipping, flaring, swaging, laser drilling, skiving, machining, and marking.
