Dive Brief:
- Sam Ajizian has left Medtronic six months after the company reversed its decision to split off its patient monitoring business.
- Ajizian, Medtronic’s chief medical officer of acute care and monitoring, revealed his departure on LinkedIn Thursday.
- The executive worked in the patient monitoring business before Medtronic combined the team with its respiratory unit in February, canceling plans for the spinoff it announced in October 2022. Ajizian is starting a new job as chief medical officer of Inflammatix, a startup developing tests for infections and sepsis, he posted on Friday.
Dive Insight:
Ajizian held multiple positions in his more than nine years at Medtronic. In 2020, the company made Ajizian CMO of patient monitoring. Two years later, Medtronic outlined plans to spin off its monitoring and respiratory interventions businesses to form a new connected care company. Ajizian’s part of Medtronic sold products such as pulse oximetry, brain monitoring and perfusion monitoring solutions.
Medtronic tore up that plan in February, choosing instead to exit the ventilator market and fold its remaining patient monitoring and respiratory businesses into a new group. Ajizian became CMO of the new acute care and monitoring business earlier this year. Now, the executive has left Medtronic.
Ajizian’s departure is the latest in a series of leadership changes at Medtronic. This year, CFO Karen Parkhill left to join HP, Rob ten Hoedt retired as president of global regions, and Bob White, former president of the medical surgical portfolio, departed in conjunction with the closure of the ventilator business.
Over the same period, Medtronic promoted Linnea Burman to president of its neurovascular business and hired Raman Venkatesh and Yarmela Pavlovic. Venkatesh became Medtronic’s first chief sustainability officer, and Pavlovic took the title of chief regulatory officer.