He helps (and makes) millions
It was just another 11-hour workday for Robert Fischell, 85, who was putting in time recently on a medical device that he says will lower blood pressure by at least 30 points.
After having brought relief to sufferers of heart disease, epileptic seizures, diabetes and migraines, among other ailments, physicist-inventor Fischell is now focusing on hypertension.
Fischell, who lives in Dayton, Md., has been credited with improving the health of millions and saving the lives of countless others through the medical instruments he has invented or perfected.
In his innovative 15-minute procedure to lower blood pressure, “three steel needles will each deliver a drop of alcohol into the nerves surrounding the renal artery…which will dramatically reduce both the systolic (the top number) and the diastolic (bottom number)” readings, Fischell said.
The procedure will “decrease pill usage and dramatically improve the lives of hypertension sufferers,” he said.
Pacemakers and stents
That’s only the latest in a string of problem-solving inventions.
In 1962, Fischell developed the first widely-accepted rechargeable pacemaker. The device, implanted in heart disease sufferers, had lifetime batteries and was one-tenth the size of competing designs.
He then invented the implantable insulin pump, which delivered the drug internally to diabetics, rather than requiring patients to inject themselves.
Fischell devised flexible coronary stents that open clogged arteries to keep blood flowing from the heart. The Fischell invention accounts for most of the coronary stents now used worldwide. More than 10 million of them have been placed, he noted.
He and colleagues have come up with a device that can stop or diminish epileptic seizures. The device is implanted in the cranial bone, wired to that part of the brain that senses an oncoming seizure, and prevents it from happening.
And then Fischell created a device implanted like a pacemaker with a wire into the heart that vibrates like a cell phone to warn of a heart attack.
“The warning will be provided even before the patient has any symptom …which is really vital to the 25 percent of all patients who never get any warning that they are having a heart attack,” Fischell said.
Conquering migraines
And that’s not all, folks. The work on life-changing instruments continues.
Fischell has put the final touches on an invention that stops migraine headaches at their inception. The portable device is held against the back of the head, a button is pressed, and two magnetic pulses, 15 seconds apart, tell the neurons of the brain to hibernate and forget about causing the migraine.
“The patients feel a not unpleasant tingle in their scalp,” he said, from the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) produced by the Spring TMS device.
The Food and Drug Administration, not known for rushing its approval on new drugs or medical devices, has been looking at the invention for the past five years. The agency is expected to give its final approval this summer. It is already available in Europe, Fischell said.
What this will mean, he said, is that migraine headaches will be a scourge of the past for many, and current sufferers will no longer have to buy expensive pills. And, unlike so many medications advertised on TV, there are no side effects from its use.
The device, he noted, could fit into a pocketbook and will come in several colors. There are reportedly some 36 million migraine sufferers in the nation; three out of every four of them are women.
Fischell expects medical insurers to cover the cost of the device, which would require a doctor’s prescription. Fischell said the annual leasing cost for the device will be about $2,800, approximately the same price as for yearly Botox injections to relieve migraines.
In another recent effort, Fischell and a University of Maryland colleague are working on a way to significantly reduce brain concussions among football players by connecting the helmet to the shoulder pads. He said the National Football league and Under Armour Corp. are considering funding development of the design.
A brilliant mind
For a person to think up one of these devices and bring it to market would be a major accomplishment. How does Fischell produce so many, and retain his creative abilities into his 80s?
His answer may at first sound impertinent or egotistical: “When I see a medical problem, my mind often sees the solution, often in less than a minute,” he said.
But it takes much more time and effort to turn the idea into a working prototype that can be mass produced and commercialized.
William Bentley, chairman of the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at the University of Maryland, shared his view of Fischell with the Baltimore Sun. “Bob has an amazing mental acuity that allows him to just parse the noise and cut to the chase,” Bentley said.
This unique ability has not only made him a highly sought after inventor, but also a wealthy man. He and his family reportedly earn a $12 royalty on the sale of each stent based on his designs. With more than 10 million sold, that amounts to more than $120 million.
Not surprisingly, Fischell uses much of his money, like his brain power, to help others.
In 2006, he and his family contributed $31 million to endow the University of Maryland department now named for him. He and his wife, Susan, also recently donated $1 million to Howard County General Hospital.
“You can even make some money by helping people,” Fischell noted. “This gives you the ability to be philanthropic.”
Rough start
Fischell didn’t begin life in a world of privilege. He started out as a “poor kid, growing up in the Bronx,” who worked hard and got “lucky.” He didn’t even have much in the way of role models or support from his family.
His father, he said, didn’t think that he would ever be successful. In fact, his parents mostly ignored him when he was a child. “So I set out to prove I was going to be OK,” Fischell recalled.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Duke University in 1951, he got his master’s in physics from the University of Maryland (which later awarded him an honorary doctoral degree in 1968).
After graduation, he spent eight years as a civilian engineer for the Navy, then moved to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where he worked for 32 years.
There, as chief engineer and associate director of the space department, he helped devise some 50 satellites, including the Global Positioning Satellite, now used on devices all over the world as a direction finder.
He left the lab in 1997 to devote all his time to inventing medical devices. Fischell now holds more than 200 U.S, and foreign patents, and has started up 10 medical device companies.
Among his many honors: in 1984, named by the Intellectual Property Owners Association as the Inventor of the Year in the USA; in 2002, inducted into the Space and Technology Hall of Fame; in 2005, he won the first $100,000 (now one million dollar) TED Prize, “awarded to an extraordinary individual with a creative and bold vision to spark global change.”
So, as he is happy to point out, despite the lack of a role model and parental predictions otherwise, the poor boy from the Bronx has turned out more than OK.
Retirement not an option
Health-wise, Fischell said he feels almost the same as when he was 35, except that when he gets up from a long stint at his desk, his legs stiffen up somewhat.
He plays doubles tennis about three times a week and works out in his home gym with a personal trainer, who visits twice a week.
His three sons — a physicist, a cardiologist and a business executive — work with him on developing and marketing his many medical devices.
When he has spare time, he mostly concentrates his reading on books about history. “It’s interesting to see how humans have acted over the centuries. The same things compel people in all ages: the desire for power, money, sex, control,” he noted.
Fischell may go out to the movies “about twice a year,” but he is a steady TV viewer, especially of crime shows like “Law and Order,” which he likes to watch in bed with wife Susan.
Well, isn’t it about time for him to retire?
Not on your life, which he still may save one day.
“If you have the ability to improve the health of tens of millions of people, do you have a right to stop working?” he asked rhetorically.
“I feel that when I get an idea that could dramatically improve the life of a human being, I’m obligated to [develop it]. Besides, working makes me happy.”
If Robert Fischell could write his own epitaph what would it be?
He laughed, thought a few seconds — about as long as it took him to come up with some inventions — then said:
“He did well by doing good.”