Medtech pioneer Dr. Tom Fogarty passes away at 91

This portrait photo of Dr. Tom Fogarty accompanied the 2014 announcement that President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential National Medal of Technology and Innovation. [Photo courtesy of Fogarty Innovation]

Dr. Tom Fogarty, a prolific medtech inventor who pioneered minimally invasive surgery in the 1960s and later founded the innovation institute that bears his name, has died.

Fogarty was 91. According to an announcement on Fogarty Innovation’s website, Fogarty passed away peacefully on Dec. 28, 2025.

The Mountain View, California–based institute, located on the campus of El Camino Health, said:

“Tom dedicated his career to improving patient care. A cardiovascular surgeon and a gifted engineer, Tom had an innate ability to envision practical solutions to the problems he observed at the bedside. As an innovator and entrepreneur, his relentless pursuit of ‘a better way,’ fueled numerous inventions that fundamentally changed surgical practice. These include the industry-standard Fogarty balloon embolectomy catheter, which transformed what had been a high-morbidity, high-mortality open procedure for removing blood clots in the legs into a minimally invasive approach; the Hancock Tissue Heart Valve; and the AneuRx Endovascular Aortic Stent Graft, among many others. Over the course of his career, Tom was awarded over 190 medical patents; founded or co-founded more than 45 medical technology companies; and received numerous prestigious honors recognizing his contributions to medical science. These include the Lemelson-MIT Prize; induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame; and the Presidential Medal of Technology and Innovation.”

Medtech innovators are noting Fogarty’s passing.

Dr. Tom Fogarty invented the Fogarty balloon embolectomy catheter and founded or co-founded more than 45 medtech companies. [Photo courtesy of Fogarty Innovation]

Brian Fahey, co-founder of heart failure device developer Adona Medical, recalled on LinkedIn how his startup, Niveus Medical, received crucial support from Fogarty in the late 2000s, becoming the first medtech startup to join Fogarty Innovation.

“In the days since his passing, I’ve struggled to think of the single best advice he ever shared with me,” Fahey said. “I settled on this: always put the patients first. Start-ups are messy, but never lose sight of the reason we do what we do. If the patients win, the company usually will too. Learn everything you can about your patients, then go and make their life better.”

Said Imperative Care CEO Fred Khosravi: “We all lost an undisputed giant in Tom Fogarty, MD. His well-practiced credo of ‘Do the right thing and fear no backlash’ was the true core of his innovative power. The medtech space is profoundly blessed to have a forebear like Tom.”