Today we visited the Research and Development sector of Medtronic in Galway. Medtronic is a massive biomedical device company that is dedicated to create medical devices for the human body. We took a bus from our Bed and Breakfast in Doolin to Galway and got a glimpse of the several large Medtronic buildings. After entering the customer relations building, we got a brief lecture of the history, overview, and mission of medtronic. We were also given a brief overview of the current type of research Medtronic is performing.
After the brief lecture we got to tour the research and development department of the Galway campus. This was a very unique and special experience because we could actually watch the creation of the next generation of biomedical devices. Among the machinery in the labs were massive 3D printers, which have helped facilitate a quicker development process of new ideas. The final part of our visit was getting a first-hand look at some of Medtronic's new technologies. The technologies we looked at were advanced pacemakers, heart valves, and stents. All of these devices had interactive demonstrations involved and we got to talk to real engineers from the company who worked and knew about the technology. Overall this trip was very interesting and informative regardless of what area of engineering you’re interested in.
