Steve Kiemele got a taste for what early detection of coronary heart disease means – not at the doctor’s office, but in an attorney’s office in downtown Minneapolis during an investor presentation.Kiemele, the CFO of the North Dakota life sciences fund Linn Grove Ventures, was in Minneapolis in January to listen to a pitch by [...]

Minnesota medical device and biotech companies won about $24 million in tax credits and grants from the Qualified Therapeutic Discovery program. The $1 billion initiative born from federal healthcare reform law seeks to boost companies working on therapies that save money.

Haunted by her husband’s death, Marie Johnson, an engineer who now directs the University of Minnesota Medical Devices Fellowship program, is developing a low-cost acoustic device that primary care doctors can use to spot potential heart trouble.

The director of the University of Minnesota’s Medical Device Center Fellows program developed algorithms and signal processing techniques used in detecting and analyzing abnormal heart beats. The resulting system, a juiced-up stethoscope made by Maplewood-based 3M Cos. and data-crunching software created by Zargis Medical Corp. was named Innovation of the Year by Popular Science magazine.