en.Wedoany.com Reported - Boston Scientific recently announced an investment of €75 million in R&D capabilities in Galway. Gael stated that this investment reflects Boston Scientific's confidence in its Irish base and the company's development direction in the region.
Founded in 1979, Boston Scientific is now a global medical device company with revenues of $20 billion, operations in 127 countries, 59,000 employees, and treating 48 million patients annually. The company has three manufacturing sites in Ireland, employing approximately 8,000 people. Among them, the Galway site is the largest, with over 4,000 employees, primarily producing cardiovascular products, including the Watchman device—an implantable product for stroke prevention that reduces the risk of blood clots and the need for lifelong blood thinners. The Clonmel site manufactures active implantable devices such as defibrillators, pacemakers, and deep brain stimulation devices for treating Parkinson's disease. The Cork site produces cancer treatment products, catheters, and a device called Rotablator, which rotates at 160,000 revolutions per minute to drill through calcified plaque in arteries.
Gael earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree from University College Cork (UCC), trained at PwC, and then held his first industry role at Millipore (now Merck). He recalled advice from an early manager: one can be a scorekeeper or a team player, and being a team player is more fun. Gael refers to this principle as Gemba, which means going to where the problem occurs to communicate with frontline workers, and he has applied this philosophy in every role. He joined Boston Scientific Cork as Finance Director in 2013, became site lead two years later, and took on an EMEA regional role two years ago. In leadership, Gael draws on the Shingo Prize model, which places the North Star (positively impacting patient lives) at the top, humble leadership and respect for every individual at the base, and emphasizes solving problems by assigning the right people with clear goals in the middle.
Regarding the future of human health, Gael noted that average life expectancy in Ireland has increased by more than 20 years over the past century, putting pressure on the healthcare system. He believes artificial intelligence, robotics, and remote monitoring are part of the response. In manufacturing, the focus is on post-pandemic supply chain resilience and smarter, more connected factories that aggregate data to support decision-making.
With 8,000 employees in Ireland, Gael told the company's board that this represents over 70,000 years of cumulative knowledge, the company's greatest asset.
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