Emergent Medical Partners

Investment decisions are led by founder and general partner Dr. Thomas J. Fogarty, working alongside general partners Robert Brownell and Kirt Kirtland. Dr. Fogarty brings more than 125 patents and decades of medtech operating experience, while Brownell contributes legal and deal-structuring expertise from his time at Wilson Sonsini and MedVenture Associates. Kirtland adds CEO-level operational experience across multiple device specialties. The firm describes its partnership as highly integrated, with all three general partners involved in sourcing and evaluating deals.

The firm sources opportunities through Dr. Fogarty’s network of clinicians, engineers, and entrepreneurs built over five decades in cardiovascular surgery and medical device invention. The general partners’ combined operating and legal backgrounds provide access to companies at the earliest stages, often before they are visible to larger institutional investors. The firm’s website highlights its ability to identify promising technologies and management teams from its own clinical and industry relationships.

It is structured as a venture capital firm, not a family office. The firm raises capital from outside investors and operates as a private equity partnership under the name Emergent Medical Partners. Dr. Fogarty’s personal wealth from his inventions and company exits does not appear to be the sole source of capital, and the firm explicitly describes its role as backing portfolio companies and delivering results for its investors.

The firm focuses on direct, early-stage equity investments in medical device companies. There is no public evidence of fund-of-funds commitments or investments as a limited partner in other venture funds. Its portfolio, as listed on the firm’s website, consists entirely of names of directly held operating companies across multiple device sectors.

The firm targets early-stage, seed, and startup rounds. Its portfolio companies are typically pre-revenue or early-commercialization medical device developers. Exits often occur through acquisition by larger strategic manufacturers like Medtronic, Abbott, and Hologic, as seen in the firm’s disclosed track record of over 15 acquisitions since its founding.

The firm’s portfolio and team bios show a clear concentration on medical devices, with no investments in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology platforms, healthcare services, or healthcare IT outside of device-enabling software. Companies like Arterys represent a software component, but the firm does not list any pure digital health or therapeutics plays outside device-drug combinations like the Incline Therapeutics acquisition.

The firm’s website does not explicitly describe its co-investment posture, but Dr. Fogarty’s prior role as a general partner at Three Arch Partners and the small size of the Emergent team suggests a willingness to invest alongside other medtech-focused venture firms. Several portfolio companies, including HeartFlow and Fractyl, are known to have broad syndicates of venture investors, though the firm does not disclose the composition of those syndicates on its own site.