St Jude's pacemaker programmer
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) has approved St Jude Medical's Merlin patient care system to manage patients implanted with cardiac devices. The universal programmer for cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT) devices, implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) and pacemakers has been approved in the US since April 2006. It is a portable computer that allows doctors to programme the device at the time of implant, retrieve and analyse patient information during routine follow-up visits, and make programming changes to the implanted device. St Paul, Minnesota-based St Jude developed the Merlin patient care system with the information technology company IBM.