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James LeVoy Sorenson
Chairman, Sorenson Development, Inc.
James LeVoy Sorenson is a renowned American entrepreneur who invented and produced many ingenious medical devices that are standard equipment in health care today. He is known foremost for developing the computerized heart monitor, which was the first device able to accurately monitor conditions inside a living human heart. Among Mr. Sorenson’s other inventions are the first disposable paper surgical mask, the first plastic venous catheter and the first blood recycling system for trauma and surgical procedures. With more than 40 medical patents, it is likely that a Sorenson medical innovation is at work in every operating room and intensive care unit in the United States.
Mr. Sorenson’s ultra-successful career is well known, but less well understood are the great obstacles he overcame to achieve these extraordinary accomplishments. Becoming one of America’s premier biotechnology pioneers was an outcome no one would have predicted for young James, who grew up in a tarpaper shack in Yuba City, California. Slow of speech and dyslexic, his first grade teacher told his mother her son was mentally retarded and would probably never be able to read. Through determination, his grades gradually improved and he dreamed of becoming a physician, but a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints mission and World War II disrupted his path to medical school.
After the war, Mr. Sorenson was hired by Upjohn to sell pharmaceuticals to physicians in Salt Lake City. Always alert to opportunity, he finished sales calls early and purchased underpriced land around Salt Lake City as a sideline. Soon his real estate endeavors were more lucrative than Upjohn’s sales position.
In 1957, Mr. Sorenson left Upjohn and co-founded Deseret Pharmaceutical to resell drugs to physicians. Drug sales, however, interested him less than solving the health care delivery problems he watched hospital physicians encounter during his sales calls to them. After observing surgeons mistrustfully sort through reusable cloth surgical masks, he had the idea of making disposable masks. It is emblematic of Mr. Sorenson’s methods that, while his ideas are clearly creative, their development is systematic. His research included blowing billions of bacteria through various kinds of material to find a 99.9 percent effective filter. Then, because the material that worked as a filter couldn’t be sewn, he designed a way to mass-produce the masks by gluing them. Disposable surgical masks were an immediate success with physicians.
In 1962, Mr. Sorenson founded Sorenson Research and several of his inventions there revolutionized critical health care practice. For example, Sorenson Research created the first blood-recycling system for trauma and surgical procedures and the first modern catheter tip. Soon Sorenson Research was known worldwide for innovative medical products and the company helped spawn Utah’s biotechnology industry—including today’s Abbott Critical Care Systems and Becton-Dickinson Vascular Access.
In 1980, Mr. Sorenson sold Sorenson Research to Abbott Laboratories. He then founded a diverse family of enterprises ranging from real estate to genetics that are linked by an innovative spirit and an entrepreneurial heritage.
Material success is not an end in itself, says Mr. Sorenson, “Wealth is an opportunity for further achievement.” Financial success has enabled Mr. Sorenson to turn his attention to making the world a better place in which to live. One of his philanthropical endeavors, Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, is creating the world's most comprehensive correlated genetic and genealogical database, which forever changes the way ancestry research is done. By showing how closely human beings are tied by heredity, Mr. Sorenson believes he can promote peace, compassion and brotherhood among humankind.
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