On Oct. 20, 2009, AGA Medical, based in Plymouth, designed and sold small devices that closed defects in the heart. The company, founded by Kurt Amplatz, MD and son-in-law Frank Gougeon in 1997 was sold to St. Jude Medical in 2010 for $1.3 billion, and has been an Abbott company since 2017.

Amplatz invented the Amplatzer Septal Occluder that is inserted by percutaneous catheter placement, thus avoiding open heart surgery. Amplatz, who was a professor of radiology at the University of Minnesota from 1957 to 1997, was a world-renowned pioneer in interventional radiology and pediatric cardiology.