My Book - 0verview

I have nearly completed my book, I hope to begin distributing the proposal this fall.

It's a nonfiction book about:

The Life and Death of a Technology

Overview


In the late 1970’s a need was arising in the Operating Room for the anesthesiologist to have better and more accurate information about the genre and amount of anesthetic gas being delivering to a patient during surgery. The days of adjusting the mechanical dial on a vaporizer and mixing Nitrous Oxide and Oxygen by adjusting their respective flow meters to achieve the desired concentrations without directly monitoring the downstream result were about to come to an end.

With an ever increasing number of anesthetic gases to choose from it was also important for the anesthesiologist to know that the gas being delivering was the correct one. Not only would this information be clinically valuable but it would provide a significant margin of safety never before available to the patient. Add to this the possibility of reduced insurance rates, a result of the improved safety, for the doctors and the more accurate measurement of delivered gases which could result in usage savings to the hospital and you would have a winning product.

The birth of this technology was a long one. It wasn’t invented overnight; it didn’t grow in a Petri dish by accident and wasn’t commissioned by the company hierarchy. It was the result of the hard work and imagination of a handful of fiercely loyal and dedicated employees, employees that never gave up on their idea of monitoring respired patient gases during anesthesia.

When I came to work for the company in the quality engineering department there was no sign of any such technology. Not long after my arrival the first piece of the needed technology showed up on our door step - acquired from a fledgling medical instrument company in Baltimore. It was a mass spectrometer especially designed for application in the medical market place. The mass spectrometer, it turns out, happens to be the most versatile, accurate and sensitive instrument that can be used for analyzing patient respired gases.

The mass spectrometer acquired from the Baltimore company came with some serious baggage. There was a bevy of problems that needed resolution. Some of the technical problems were so overwhelming that we had to enlist the assistance of the scientists that had designed the original instrument. It was the only way we were going to be able to apply this instrument effectively to the anesthesia monitoring market

The mass spectrometer was just one piece of the system that was envisioned. The associated electronic devices, computer and displays, had to be outsourced. Problems arose with the outside company hired to develop the computer and monitors to be used in the systems. Problems that further slowed the development of our dream.

Eventually I found out that we were not the only company developing such a system. There was a company in California working on a striking similar system. This meant that we would have to redouble our efforts to be sure that the system we would eventually sell would have competitive advantages over the system from California.

Eventually the handful of fiercely loyal prevailed and a system for analyzing respiratory and anesthetic gases was born. It became a big seller and brought in much need revenue to the company. As might be expected with new technology, during its lifetime other problems emerged but with the help of the original designers, a caring general manager, and the loyalists the show stoppers were all corrected.

The company liked to re-invent itself and each re-invention was accompanied by a name change, six in all during the products lifetime. One day we were told that not only would there be another name change but there would also be a new owner. Our division was sold to a large old line company that was attempting to get into the medical device business. Fortunately there was no move involved with the sale; we were staying right where the old company had moved us a few short months before, after one of the re- inventions.

In the beginning everyone was happy with the new owner but it wasn’t long until the new owner decided to consolidate the business in Kansas City and to make matters worse for us we would be consolidating with the company that made the computers and monitors for the system. The fiercely loyal, myself included, weren’t about to go to Kansas City especially since our relationship with them was strained as a result of the many suspect business and product issues that we had experienced. What we did next was going to surprise many; our fierce loyalty didn’t necessarily include the new owner, especially since we felt that the direction of the business had turned away from our vision.

Seven of us set out to start our own business; ideally we wanted to remain in the anesthesia monitoring business if we could. Ultimately that was made possible by partnering with a very successful businessman from Milwaukee already in the medical device business.

With his help we were able to buy, of all things, the anesthesia monitoring business of the competitor from California who had recently decided to get out of the Medical device business. We set up our new business just down the street from the one we had just left and immediately began selling systems in competition with our old company.

I suppose we shouldn’t have been too surprised at the old company’s reaction after all it was a bit of an in your face thing we did. Sure enough we sued by the old company, eight counts in the suit, all groundless. What was surprising to us was the seeming vindictiveness of the charges. We could only assume the whole thing was meant to be a distraction to slow us down. The litigation failed to go beyond the deposition phase, reinforcing our belief that the suit was only meant as a distraction and never believed to be winnable. Possibly even a cover for the failed management of the new division. Relieved and free from the distractions of the suit we forged ahead with the tasks of our start up. After three years the business was not performing up to expectations so the Milwaukee partner decided to buy us out and move us to Milwaukee. We were no longer working for ourselves but had suddenly become ordinary employees again.

It was going to be necessary to put new life into the old business if it was going to survive. There was emerging technologies that had to be considered and the mass spectrometer was growing very long in the tooth.

A new technology was rapidly making its way into the Operating Room, taking market share from the mass spectrometer systems. The sales of mass spectrometer based systems eventually grew so small that the Milwaukee company quit making them.

Even the new mass spectrometer that we developed to compete with the invading new technology couldn’t save the species. It was the end of an era, an era that saw nearly two decades of use from a technology that no doubt had saved lives, reduced insurance premiums and saved hospitals many dollars on their supplies.

We weren’t without a product though, you see, one of the fiercely loyal, unable to resist the temptation, developed a device using a new technology and it turned out to be an even bigger seller!