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Medtronic Co-Founder Who Created Wearable Pacemaker Dies At Age 94 (www.ept.ca)
YVRGeek shares a report: Earl Bakken, an electronics repairman who created the first wearable external pacemaker and co-founded one of the world's largest medical device companies, Medtronic, has died. He was 94. Bakken, who also commercialized the first implantable pacemaker in 1960, died Sunday at his home in Hawaii, Medtronic said in a statement. It didn't give a cause of death. Bakken and his brother-in-law, Palmer Hermundslie, formed Medtronic in 1949 and turned it from a struggling company they ran out of the Hermundlie family's Minneapolis garage into a multinational medical technology powerhouse.
Here is the mission statement of his company:
THE MEDTRONIC MISSION To contribute to human welfare by application of biomedical engineering in the research, design, manufacture, and sale of instruments or appliances that alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life.
To direct our growth in the areas of biomedical engineering where we display maximum strength and ability; to gather people and facilities that tend to augment these areas; to continuously build on these areas through education and knowledge assimilation; to avoid participation in areas where we cannot make unique and worthy contributions.
To strive without reserve for the greatest possible reliability and quality in our products; to be the unsurpassed standard of comparison and to be recognized as a company of dedication, honesty, integrity, and service.
To make a fair profit on current operations to meet our obligations, sustain our growth, and reach our goals.
To recognize the personal worth of employees by providing an employment framework that allows personal satisfaction in work accomplished, security, advancement opportunity, and means to share in the company's success.
To maintain good citizenship as a company.
Now THAT is someone to admire.
A few years ago, my girlfriend and I were in Minneapolis for a concert and we stopped at the Bakken Museum.
If you are in the area, I would recommend visiting it. It was very interesting to see the history of pacemakers and similar devices.