The Big MedTech Players Are Coming for Wearables

OK, slightly behind on news here with the “year end” wrap-ups, but there was an interesting press release on June 4^th.

Medtronic signed an exclusive US distribution deal with a company called Corsano Health for a wrist-worn wearable that continuously monitors vital signs including heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, skin temperature, and activity. It’s FDA-cleared, medical-grade, and built for hospital and home use.

If you don’t think that’s news, let me explain why I found it interesting:

Medtronic is about as old-school, big MedTech as it gets. Their world is surgical tools and implantables, sold by sales reps who carry devices into operating rooms and support doctors during surgical procedures. Companies like Medtronic, Boston Scientific, Abbott, and J&J were built around surgeons and surgery and they’re only interested in products that can be sold via those sales reps to those doctors.

So, historically the world of wearable medical devices couldn’t really look to those big MedTech companies for their exit.

However, for about the last decade those same MedTech companies have been focusing a lot of their M&A efforts on growing the number of products one sales rep can offer to the same call locations, maybe upstream or downstream in the patient journey towards their big moneymaking devices.

The reasoning behind this is three-fold:

1. Same call point, easier to implement and find synergies with their current operational model

2. Grow the funnel. The more patients are driven to these clinicians for a certain disease state, the more make it to that big surgery.

3. Add viable treatment options for the clinicians

Medtronic has a salesforce that walks into a clinic and talks to a set of doctors, and they want to keep filling that bag with things to sell those same doctors. That is how you grow revenue off a call point you already own. A wearable is a new thing in the existing bag, sold to the same clinicians, through the same relationships.

And there is a further potential advantage. The data. If a wearable can help qualify the right candidates for a procedure, rule patients in or out, sharpen who actually belongs in surgery, that is worth something to a company whose business is the surgery. Additionally, the data a continuous monitor generates can potentially improve product design in the future if it helps the companies learn what works best for specific patients.

Given all of this it might seem obvious that a big MedTech company would have been exploring wearables before, but honestly this is the FIRST I’m hearing about it. Which to me means we are seeing a turning point in the market.

Now, a wearable company CAN aim for an exit to those big MedTech guys, which changes potential commercialization and product design decisions and how investors should be viewing these opportunities.

Now, before anyone tells me a distribution deal is not an exit, you’re right, it isn’t. But it can be the thing that leads to one. Medtronic ran a co-promotion partnership with a coronary digital health company called CathWorks starting back in 2022, and this past April they bought the company outright for up to $585 million. Sometimes the distribution deal is just the first date, and the acquisition is where it goes once the strategic has watched your product perform inside their own channel. Whether the Corsano deal ever gets there, who knows. The path exists, and a big device company just put a wearable on it!

And if you think about it a bit more…

You know how we’re all impressed with WHOOP and Oura reaching valuations around $10B+?

We’ve taken a lot of time discussing how smaller medtech should look to companies like Oura, WHOOP, Apple, Samsung, etc. for their exit

BUT do you know what Medtronic’s market valuation is? Medtronic sits around $100 billion.

Should we be talking about the “smaller” tech companies trying to exit or be acquired by the big MedTech companies?

Yes, Oura filed for an IPO in May and WHOOP called its raise the last private round it would do so they’re both headed to the public markets and not really shopping themselves to a strategic, but I’ve seen massive mergers in the MedTech space over my career and I’d say its not out of the realm of possibilities.

Before this Corsano news I don’t think my brain would have ever gone there, but now it feels like a legitimate conversation.

Wearables are becoming legitimate medical devices, not just consumer gadgets. So why not look to join forces?

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Takeaways for startups

If you are building a wearable and wondering whether one of the big device companies could be a real exit someday, here is the short version of what I would be asking myself:

1. Does your product fit a channel their salesforce already sells into? This deal is hospital and hospital-to-home, not the consumer app store. If your whole go-to-market is direct-to-consumer, you are not speaking their language yet.

2. Does it widen the funnel of patients heading to the same points of care and the same clinicians they already serve? A wearable that feeds the relationships they already own is worth far more to them than a standalone device.

3. Will your data hold up under the hood? A device company will scrutinize your accuracy and data quality in a way a tech buyer never would. I do not think you have to be a cleared device to be a target, but if your accuracy story is thin, that is where it gets found out.

4. Do you own the hardware and the software? This runs against the usual advice. Exiting to an existing wearables player usually means slotting your IP into their device as a software layer. A big device company has no consumer wearable for you to build into, so owning the whole thing, hardware and software, is not redundant. It is the opportunity.

None of this guarantees anything. It is just the honest set of questions about whether you are building something this kind of buyer would actually want.

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Blythe Karow is a strategic management consultant and founder of The Karow Advisory Group. The insights shared here reflect Blythe’s strategic expertise navigating the complex world of MedTech and wearables. Imagine what that same thinking could uncover when applied to your business.

How Blythe can help:

• Commercialization & Market Readiness Reviews

• Product & Business Strategy

• U.S. Market Entry Planning & Education

• Strategic Advisory for MedTech, Wearables, and HealthTech

[1] Medtronic, “Medtronic expands its Acute Care & Monitoring wearables portfolio in the U.S. with a new distribution agreement for the Corsano multi-parameter wearable,” June 4, 2026. The agreement follows a 2025 launch of the Corsano wearable in Western Europe.

[2] Medtronic, “Medtronic completes acquisition of CathWorks,” April 20, 2026. The acquisition, valued at up to $585 million, followed a 2022 strategic partnership and co-promotion agreement for the CathWorks FFRangio System.

[3] Oura filed confidentially for a US IPO on May 21, 2026, at an approximately $11 billion valuation. WHOOP raised $575 million in March 2026 at a $10.1 billion valuation, stating it was its final private round ahead of a planned IPO.