Profile

Edwards Lifesciences is an American medical technology company headquartered in Irvine, California, specializing in artificial heart valves and hemodynamic monitoring. It developed the SAPIEN transcatheter aortic heart valve made of cow tissue within a balloon-expandable, cobalt-chromium frame, deployed via catheter. The company has manufacturing facilities at the Irvine headquarters, as well as in Draper, Utah; Costa Rica; the Dominican Republic; Puerto Rico; and Singapore; and is building a new facility due to be completed in 2021 in Limerick, Ireland. Edwards was originally founded by engineer Miles “Lowell” Edwards in 1958. Edwards and Dr. Albert Starr, a surgeon at the University of Oregon Medical School, designed, developed, tested and successfully placed in a patient the first Starr-Edwards mitral valve in 1960. As a result of the successful heart surgery, Edwards Laboratories was founded in Santa Ana, California that same year.