The history
of Medical Alley

How Minnesota visionaries started a worldwide healthcare movement.

Fostering the healthcare community from day one

"There are few places in the world like Minnesota, where entrepreneurs, doctors, business leaders, government officials, professors, and others have done so much together to advance mankind's ability to take care of itself. This comes from a rare willingness on the part of our scientists and hospital directors to work with industrial leaders and entrepreneurs to innovate and launch new medical products and systems that result in  healthcare cost reduction for the world.

If one wishes to get help to launch, develop, or test a new medical product, Minnesota's Medical Alley is the place to be. In Minnesota, success in the medical field is rarely a surprise, it's an expectation—an expectation which has been fulfilled for a lot of people." 

— Lee Berlin in 1984 dedicating the founding of Medical Alley.

The ideas that sparked our organization

Medical Alley’s founders brought unique and complementary ideas to the creation of the organization that influence our work to this day.

Earl Bakken believed bringing together healthcare’s diverse communities—clinicians, administrators, payors, scientists, engineers, businesspeople, patients, and government—would result in lower costs and better outcomes. Forty years later Medical Alley is still the only organization with this cross-sector approach.

Lee Berlin and Governor Perpich wanted to put (and keep) Minnesota on the map. They believed Minnesota could be “The Great State of Health”—where smart people and innovative companies would seek out Medical Alley as the place to be. Thousands of people and hundreds of companies did just that.