Company Profile
Edwards Lifesciences LLC
Company Overview
Edwards Lifesciences is the global leader in patient-focused medical innovations for structural heart disease, as well as critical care and surgical monitoring. Driven by a passion to help patients, the company collaborates with the world's leading clinicians and researchers to address unmet healthcare needs, working to improve patient outcomes and enhance lives. Headquartered in Irvine, California, Edwards Lifesciences has extensive operations in North America, Europe, Japan, Latin America and Asia and currently employs over 13,000 individuals worldwide.
For us, helping patients is not a slogan - it's our life's work. From developing devices that replace or repair a diseased heart valve to creating new technologies that monitor vital signs in the critical care setting, we focus on helping patients regain and improve the quality of their life.
Company History
Edwards Lifesciences’ roots date to 1958, when Miles “Lowell” Edwards set out to build the first artificial heart.
Edwards was a 60-year-old, recently retired engineer holding 63 patents in an array of industries, with an entrepreneurial spirit and a dream of helping patients with heart disease. His fascination with healing the heart was sparked in his teens, when he suffered two bouts of a disease called rheumatic fever, which can scar heart valves and eventually cause the heart to fail.
With a background in hydraulics and fuel pump operations, Edwards believed the human heart could be mechanized. He presented the idea to Dr. Albert Starr, a young surgeon at the University of Oregon Medical School, who thought the idea was too complex. Instead, Starr encouraged Edwards to focus first on developing an artificial heart valve, for which there was an immediate need.
After just two years, the first Starr-Edwards mitral valve was designed, developed, tested, and successfully placed in a patient. Newspapers around the world reported on what they termed a “miraculous” heart surgery.
This innovation spawned a company, Edwards Laboratories, which set up shop in Santa Ana, California – not far from where Edwards Lifesciences’ corporate headquarters is located today.
In 1966, Edwards Laboratories was purchased by American Hospital Supply Corporation and became American Edwards Laboratories. Then, in 1985, American Edwards was acquired by Baxter International Inc. In early 2000, the company was spun off as an independent, publicly held corporation and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “EW.”
