ZOLL Brand Guidelines: Dr Paul Zoll’s 1980 Pacing Company, Now Part of Asahi Kasei

Pacing research at Beth Israel, then a company in 1980.

ZOLL takes its name from Dr Paul M. Zoll, a heart specialist at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital whom the Boston Globe described in 2012 as a pioneer in the field of defibrillation. The company’s own history sets out the research behind the name: in 1952, while chief of the hospital’s cardiac clinic, Zoll showed that electrical stimulation applied to the outside of the chest could restart an effective heartbeat during cardiac arrest, and in 1956 he used external defibrillation on patients. The company adds that he worked on displaying the heart’s electrical activity on an oscilloscope screen and later on implanted pacemakers, and that he received the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 1973.

The company came later. It was founded in 1980 by a trio of entrepreneurs that included Dr Zoll, the Boston Globe reported in March 2012; ZOLL’s own history names the other two co-founders as Leigh Stein and Thomas Claflin, and says William Bright joined as chairman and Rolf Stutz as chief executive. The company describes Zoll as “The Father of Modern Cardiac Therapy,” and his surname, written in capitals, is still the brand.

The first product drew directly on his research. In 1983, the company says, it introduced the NTP 1000, a non-invasive temporary pacemaker based on Dr Zoll’s work, which paced the heart through electrodes on the skin. In 1988 it followed with the PD 1200, a single unit combining a pacemaker, defibrillator and monitor, and in 1989 with multi-function electrodes for pacing, defibrillation and monitoring.

ZOLL became a public company in 1992, according to its history, and in the same year released the PD 1400, which it describes as the smallest device of its kind for patient transport and pre-hospital care.

From the ambulance to the office wall.

Through the 1990s and 2000s the range moved from hospital pacing into the wider resuscitation market. The company dates its first automated external defibrillator clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration to 1994, and lists the M Series monitor-defibrillator in 1998, the E Series for ambulance work in 2005 and the R Series hospital defibrillator in 2006. The X Series monitor-defibrillator received FDA clearance in 2012, and in 2008, it says, an alliance with Welch Allyn made ZOLL the exclusive distributor of the Propaq LT monitor.

For public places the company built the AED Plus, which it says was designed in 2001 together with first responders and ambulance services and cleared by the FDA in 2002 with electrodes that give feedback on the depth and rate of chest compressions. The AED Pro for professional rescuers followed in 2005, and the AED 3 was approved for Europe in 2016, the company says. In July 2011 ZOLL gave Asahi Kasei exclusive rights to market and distribute the AED Plus in Japan, HospiMedica reported in 2012.

Acquisitions widened the company. ZOLL made an equity investment in LIFECOR, maker of the LifeVest wearable defibrillator, in 1996 and completed the purchase of its assets in 2006, the company says; the Boston Globe noted in 2012 that ZOLL sold a vest-like wearable model among its defibrillators. ZOLL also brought in the AutoPulse automated chest-compression device, first through an agreement with Revivant in 2003, and the ResQPOD through its developer, Advanced Circulatory Systems, which it bought in 2015.

Software is a separate line. In 1999 ZOLL bought Pinpoint Technologies, renamed ZOLL Data Systems in 2004, and its RescueNet and CodeNet products handle records for ambulance services and hospitals. Later purchases, by the company’s account, added transport ventilators in 2014, temperature-management systems, the SuperSaturated Oxygen therapy of TherOx in 2019 and, in 2021, the sleep-apnoea businesses Respicardia and Itamar Medical.

Bedside, ambulance and wall cabinet.

Makers of patient monitors and resuscitation equipment present themselves through settings more than through objects. The familiar picture is the intensive-care bedside: a monitor beside the bed, its screen filled with coloured waveforms and numbers, wired to the patient and to a central station down the corridor. The same companies also show their equipment in operating theatres, emergency departments and the backs of ambulances.

Outside the hospital, the images change. Automated external defibrillators appear in wall-mounted cabinets in railway stations, airports, offices and sports halls, often in a brightly coloured case marked with a heart symbol. Paramedics are shown kneeling with a portable monitor-defibrillator, and training courses use mannequins on the floor of a classroom, where people practise chest compressions and placing pads.

Much of the visual language comes from the signals themselves. The ECG strip, with its grid of pink or green squares and a running trace, is the oldest of these images, and many makers began with recorders that drew such traces on paper long before screens took over. Waveforms, grids and the outline of a heart recur in catalogues, brochures and trade-fair stands.

Those trade fairs are where the sector meets its buyers. MEDICA in Düsseldorf and Arab Health in the Gulf are among the international shows where makers set out their monitors, defibrillators and software side by side. This guide looks at how individual makers began, who owns them now and what they say about where their products are made, and marks clearly what rests only on a company’s own word.

A Chelmsford company with a Tokyo parent.

The largest change came in 2012. On 12 March that year ZOLL, then a Chelmsford-based maker of resuscitation devices for ambulances and critical-care products for hospitals, said it had agreed to be bought by the Japanese group Asahi Kasei, the Boston Globe reported. Chief executive Richard Packer told employees that ZOLL would operate as a wholly owned subsidiary with its management unchanged, and that the company would keep the ZOLL name while also incorporating the buyer’s name, the paper said. HospiMedica reported that on completion ZOLL would leave the NASDAQ exchange and keep its business units and operations intact, and that Asahi Kasei planned to make ZOLL the cornerstone of its critical-care business.

That is how the company presents itself today: its website calls it “ZOLL, an Asahi Kasei company,” and describes Asahi Kasei as a group founded in 1922 with ammonia and cellulose-fibre businesses, that now works in healthcare, homes and materials, with devices and systems for critical care among its healthcare operations. ZOLL’s history also records a Japanese subsidiary, Asahi Kasei ZOLL Medical, set up in 2012.

The company has continued to buy. Its history says it completed the acquisition of the AED maker Cardiac Science in 2019, and in the same year added the Golden Hour and Payor Logic software businesses and the Mobilize Rescue Systems bystander trauma kits. Today it describes its fields as defibrillation and cardiac monitoring, circulation enhancement and CPR feedback, ventilation, temperature management, supersaturated oxygen therapy, sleep-apnoea diagnosis and treatment, and data management, serving hospitals, ambulance and fire services, the military and lay rescuers.

For a design guide, ZOLL shows how a founder’s surname, set in capitals, can stretch from one pacing device to a whole resuscitation range. Compare Cardiac Science, the AED maker ZOLL bought in 2019, and Nihon Kohden, a Tokyo maker that bought its own US AED company. For this guide we use a slate, a warm linen and an ember orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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