Mark Carlson

Dr. Carlson is a cardiologist and Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) School of Medicine. Dr. Carlson joined St. Jude Medical, Inc. in 2006 and served as Corporate Chief Medical Officer and Vice President, Global Clinical Affairs until its acquisition by Abbott Laboratories in 2017 for $25B. He then served as Division Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Cardiac Arrhythmias and Heart Failure at Abbott Laboratories until 2020. Dr. Carlson received his M.D. from the University of Kansas, an M.A. in public policy from Duke University, and a B.S. in Biology from Kansas State University. He trained in internal medicine at University Hospitals of Cleveland and CWRU and in cardiology and cardiac electrophysiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University. He was a professor of medicine at CWRU and his research on arrhythmias and cardiac neural control has resulted in over 200 publications. He is an inventor of five United States Patents. As a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow on Senator Orrin Hatch’s Senate Judiciary Committee, Dr. Carlson worked on the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act and the Cord Blood Stem Cell Act. Dr. Carlson served on the FDA’s Devices Dispute Resolution Panel and the NCDR ICD registry steering committee. He chaired the Heart Rhythm Society’s (HRS) Health Policy Committee, the American College of Cardiology Electrophysiology Committee, the HRS/FDA Policy Conference on Device Performance, and the HRS task force on device performance policies and guidelines and the Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee.