Medtronic's Masooma Pathre on why "crisis muscle memory" beats AI in comms

The old MedTech PR playbook — spec sheets, product launches, flashy announcements — has run its course. In a sector where clinical credibility is everything, that kind of noise no longer attracts the healthcare consumer.

What's replacing it is something harder to automate: strategic judgment. The communicator who knows how a medical therapy reaches a tier 3 city in India, or how conversations about diseases are shifting in a particular market, is far more valuable than one who can produce content at speed. 

Masooma Pathre, director communications - strategic marketing enterprise, EurAsia with Medtronic has spent her career navigating exactly this kind of complexity — across chemicals, banking, and now MedTech, spanning markets from India to Eurasia. She speaks to PRmoment India on why communications is less about technology and more about what technology can't do.

The PRmoment India Interview : Masooma Pathre 

PRmoment India: Health communications is always an extremely important topic and and it's influenced by so many stakeholders that shape communication. Given your recent change in role a Eurasia strategic marketing remit, how is AI being used health communication specifically for MedTech. 

Masooma Pathre: When you are working in a market which is as widespread as Eurasia, AI plays such an important role for helping with market insights. That can also help you understand how policy is moving in a particular market. How disease and therapy conversations are happening. 

For example, we know that stroke conversations in India have extensively increased. it has moved a lot from cardio cardiac related stuff to stroke which is one of the top NCDs. This can really really help build narratives particularly when you are looking at the market from a policy point of view.

But specially in MedTech AI cannot replace human judgement more so because of the regulatory environment around MedTech. However it is a big capacity multiplier, you can customise content that earlier would be the same content going to every stakeholder. In the PR world we are moving from being pure communicators to intersecting with public affairs and government affairs people and that's happening a lot in MedTech at this point of time.

Paarul Chand: How do these changes impact the expectations from a corp comm professional?

Masooma Pathre: For me,  one of the most important thing is how to really make innovation simplified for the audiences. We are talking about a MedTech technology which you and I don't see. Tech which may come into  my body only when I reach an operating theatre. And that  communication is no longer about technology. It's become about emotional patient outcome storytelling. You actually see people talking less about disease states and therapy states but more about the human story out of it and saying this is how it changed my life.

 We've really moved from that flashy PR thing that I have launched a product to really how this product has impacted someone's life.

PRmoment India : I've been seeing this very strong focus on patient communication for the last 5 years.  In India  specifically there is the   added challenge of urban-rural divide, class and caste divide and language. What are the lessons really communicating in a country like India that countries can learn from given the diversity?

Masooma Pathre: One of the important things with India when you're offering therapy, is the economic background gap. That exists in this part of the world more extensively than anywhere else. 

You have to create both awareness about MedTech and access to it for the interiors. 

We are talking about availability in tier 2, tier 3 cities. Most of the markets don't have that at all. India cannot have a cookie cutter approach even from one city to another. And that's one of the biggest learning in terms of language, in terms of socioeconomic background, in terms of  availability of technology, which in Europe they see very differently. It's approved by the government. I can pay for it. The government can reimburse it. I will do it.

PRmoment India : Coming to your journey in communications. Right now you are in the MedTech sector but you've also spent time in other other sectors chemicals, for example. Would you say that it has helped you or hindered you?

Masooma Pathre: Communications is one role that sits at the intersection of risk reputation for every industry. For me, I I love the varied experiences that these industries gave me. For example, chemicals. Chemicals is a absolutely different ballgame altogether. It makes your crisis muscle memory so strong because of the number of crises that you handle or the way you have to work with the stakeholders or it's actually the whole license to operate for a chemical organization. It is very different for MedTech , its about humanising MedTech in a highly regulated ecosystem.

PRmoment India: What has it been like managing a diverse team, first with an Asia and now a Eurasia remit? What surprised you about your role?

Masooma Pathre: One of the biggest surprises for me was realising how differently people show up in meetings across cultures.

Take India—we’re vocal. If we have an opinion, we unmute, we jump in, we debate. Silence often feels like disengagement to us. But when I started working closely with other teams in Asia and EurAsia, I noticed many of them would hardly speak in meetings. Initially, I questioned myself—Is something wrong? Am I not creating a safe space? What I learned over time is that for many cultures, silence isn’t disengagement—it’s respect. Hierarchy matters. People wait to be invited to speak. Until you explicitly ask for their perspective, they won’t step in. That realization completely changed how I lead meetings today.

This  is where you learn and and  bring in those diverse experiences from different markets it helps so much.  I can clearly see now how these teams collaborate and work with each other. What's happening in India? what's happening in Korea, what's happening in, say Poland, what's happening in South Africa and how we can really work together.