Boston Scientific’s new global chief medical officer is already well-known in cardiovascular device space circles.
Dr. Ken Stein joined Boston Scientific in 2009 as SVP and chief medical officer of its Rhythm Management business. He became chief medical officer for the entire company on Feb. 13.
Stein takes over for Dr. Ian Meredith. CEO Mike Mahoney announced during an October 2022 earnings call that Meredith would retire from the global CMO job this April. Mahoney thanked Meredith — who has been global CMO since 2017 — for his “dedication to patients, clinical science and meaningful innovation, and his great sense of humor.”
As he takes over the global CMO post, Stein remains excited about pulsed-field ablation and the company’s Farapulse system.
“The emerging field of PFA has shown promise in improving both the safety of cardiac ablation therapy for patients and the efficiency and ease of use of these procedures for physicians. Positive reception to the Farapulse PFA System in Europe, where it’s currently available, suggests a need for a simpler way to treat AFib that this device may be able to fulfill,” Stein said in a Q&A posted on Boston Scientific’s website.
(Stein discussed pulsed field ablation during our DeviceTalks Boston conference in May 2022. Here’s a summary of the discussion. And here’s Stein talking about PFA during a DeviceTalks Weekly podcast in 2021.)
Stein’s desire to ‘meaningfully improve patient outcomes’ at Boston Scientific
Medicine was the family trade for Stein growing up. “My father was a general practitioner; his office was attached to our house. My younger brother is a doctor and my daughter is a doctor. So, I guess it’s in the blood,” he said in a Q&A posted on Boston Scientific’s website.
He eventually ended up publishing over 150 peer-reviewed scientific publications on electrophysiology during his more than 15 years as an electrophysiologist and associate director of Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology at Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Stein said in the Q&A that he left Weill Cornell because he saw an opportunity to be a voice for patients inside a major medical device company. ” I knew that I knew nothing about business, but I also knew that I could make sure Boston Scientific did everything we could to meaningfully improve patient outcomes.”
The goal stays with him today. When it comes to clinical trials, Stein said one of the biggest challenges is “making sure that we’re focusing on the studies we feel will have the biggest impact on patient outcomes, and designing them with that goal in mind.”