Abbott Laboratories issued the following announcement on Dec. 16
Spend a little time with Kevin Bourque and the family resemblances clearly start to come through.
His energy ever-present — there is no off switch on the man that we're aware of — he's a whirl as the details flow forth, nonstop. He just keeps pumping them out. Excited, animated, his spirit has a real magnetism. He's almost levitating.
That happens when you get him talking about his progeny.
He doesn't pull out his billfold to let loose a waterfall of pictures — in part because they're all in the room with him and he’ll show them soon enough — though you wouldn't be surprised if he had ...
Here's our first. Big boy.
Here's our second. Smaller, but STRONG.
And here's our third ... so far. A real mighty mite. And so smart!
As one of the fathers of the HeartMate line of left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) — that's so formal, they're heart pumps to family friends like you — Bourque, in his role overseeing research and technology in mechanical circulatory support, has put the best of himself and his team in each new iteration.
It's why they run longer, pump more, stress less and, yeah, levitate with the help of magnets.
And it's why, as we get him to stop — let's be honest, we're just slowing him down for a few seconds before he speeds back up again, like the artificial pulse he and the team put in HeartMate 3 — to acknowledge the milestone of HeartMate 3 being implanted more than 20,000 times, there's a lot to take in from the guy who’s been there since their conception.
Original source can be found here.
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