Dave Bajaj and I worked at Baxter. But the company had a cost cutting measure that eliminated all (or many) of the consultants. Dave bounced up. He went on to start his own biomed consulting company: Relsys. Talk about turning lemons into lemonade. Actually, I think he'd been socking away money and planning for this kind of stuff all along; lessons for me about discipline and planning. At first, it was out of a spare room in his house, and I was his first employee. I helped with the demo that got him his first contract. But soon he got an office. I worked for him on a few projects and we took on some much larger companies on contracts, and won. That fearlessness and "go for it" attitude also impressed me. We got Alcon and Spectramed and a few others. It was also a big life lesson about how people you work and contacts you make can be much more significant than you realize at the time.
Alcon - Alcon Research, Ltd. • 15800 Alton Parkway • Irvine, CA 92618 - I believe the first contract around XMas of 1990 was the Alcon Gemini / Infiniti Laser. It allowed ultrasonic phacoemulsification, ultrasound with oscillation, and liquification of cataracts... if I remember my devices correctly.
What I remember is crunching in his spare bedroom and working with him regularly on each advancement/improvement. He gave me a lot of creative control (and was good like that), so the product evolved extremely quickly and we beat out some much larger competitors for the contract, that had large teams of people working on it.
This is a screen capture of one of the early prototypes that I developed.
I believe the Gemini instrument (Code name) became the Infiniti Instrument... but I was gone, so not 100% sure.
The purpose of this device was eye surgeries.
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SpectraMED - SpectraMED • Ventura, California 93002 - There was another contract with SpectraMED that I helped Dave/Relsys on. I don't remember this one as much. I was more working from home at this point, and just knocking stuff out that I was asked to. I remember it was another medical instrument, I think a kind of infusion pump? I don't remember. I have the invoices from billing my hours on both of these. But I tend to burn (delete) documentation and stuff like that, as I don't want to have anything proprietary after a contract is over.
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Oracle - Eventually, decades later, I beleive Dave sold his company to Oracle. I was always really happy to hear that he turned his idea into a multinational corporation/division, with offices in multiple countries.
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This really tells it more as a story of working with Dave.
Dave Bajaj
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Through life and work, I've met many different people and made long friendships, and short ones. One person I worked with at Baxter Edwards was Dave Bajaj. Dave had a Masters Degree in Computer Science and was doing some more graduate work; had been seeing about getting his Doctorate. He was a soft spoken Indian guy, who was easy to get along with, and smart. He also worked hard, and took his job, and productivity, seriously. I don't know if he was a mentor, idol, or just an example, but there were a lot of things that I admired.
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