With more than 310 biomedical firms, Orange county is a prominent place in the U.S. in health care technology. This area has the highest concentration of ophthalmic industry in the world with several small companies that develop eye care devices. One of the business- boosting group called the Orange County Technology Network or Octane has created about 27 such small companies. This is a six-year-old private organization that comprises more than two dozen of top executives of corporations in the county.

According to Octane, there are 310 biomedical firms in Orange County and out of which several dozen companies develop implanted lenses, known as intraocular lenses, which are used in cataract surgery, laser surgery for vision correction and instruments to alleviate glaucoma and other eye diseases.

    “This area has the highest concentration of ophthalmic industry in the world,” said Dr. Roger F. Steinert, professor of clinical ophthalmology at the University of California, Irvine. He has been raising funds for a $50 million Eye Institute building at the university.

    Luis Vasquez of Octane visits the Eye Institute at the university of California and listens to the business ideas given by the medical researchers. He then refers those ideas to the venture capital investors and entrepreneurial businesspeople who serve on Octane’s 27- member board.

    For the growth of most of the small eye device companies, much credit goes to William J. Link, the founder of American Medical Optics and Chiron Vision in Orange County. He later sold these two companies and joined the venture capital investors who provide finance to health care companies. Mr. Link helped to finance a total of twenty such companies, most of them in Orange County.

Mr. Link started off the business about thirty-one years ago with American Medical Optics. But, in the last three or four decades, the industry has grown up at rapid pace in Orange County. Mr. Link sold his first company to Allergan in 1986. Then he founded Chiron Vision, as an Orange County eye care subsidiary of the Chiron Corporation. Chiron Corporation is a biotechnology firm based in Emeryville in Northern California.

Chiron Vision was sold to Bausch & Lomb of Rochester for $300 million in 1997. After that Mr. Link became a venture capitalist at Brentwood Venture Partners and its successor firm, Versant Ventures.

Some other such companies in the county include, WavetecVision Systems, based in Aliso Viejo, which is working on an instrument to help doctors measure patients’ corrected vision. The company has raised $18 million in venture capital and hopes to achieve commercial operation next year.

Eyeonics again based in in Aliso Viejo, is a company founded by J. Andy Corley and Dr. J. Stuart Cumming in 1988. Mr. Corley has changed the industry by persuading Medicare to let patients pay surgeons extra and directly for specialized lenses. Mr. Corley worked with Mr. Link at American Medical Optics and at Chiron Vision too. Eyeonics was sold to Bausch & Lomb by Corley for more than $80 million last February.

Glaukos Corporation, headed by Thomas W. Burns is an another eye device company based in Laguna Hills. The company makes tiny titanium stents to drain fluid from the eye and prevent glaucoma. The company is backed by $55 million in venture capital.

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Orange County has become a center for small eye care device companies in recent decades. the Orange County Technology Network or Octane has created about 27 such small companies. It is a six-year-old private organization that comprises more than two dozen of top executives of corporations in the county. More…

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