I met Lynn Kellen in September 1998. She hired me as Production and Design Engineer for Med Link Medical, Inc. My role was to increase reliability, streamline production, and make our supply chain more robust.
About Lynn Kellen and her microscope
She smoked like Cleveland, and drank like a frat boy. She didn’t exactly cuss like a sailor, but her tone of voice made you think she did. Tall, slender, blonde, with every hair in place, and the voice of a General. Lynn had this swashbuckling, direct style that I found very entertaining. If you had the guts to advocate for a different concern you thought she was overlooking, she was also reasonable.
Lynn was a genius at politics. She had a comprehensive vision of the whole web of status, alliances, allegiances, and strife between every surgeon. In medical capital purchasing, office people usually hold sway. They don’t like dealing with small companies. So Lynn cultivated personal relationships with high-status surgeons to drive sales to larger hospitals. To this day, if you are a surgeon, everyone will know you are a big deal if you can get a hospital where you practice, to purchase a Medlink microscope.
Lynn neither knew nor cared about engineering, only results. This made her management style perfect for me. Benign neglect. I could work with few constraints to solve problems, favoring ones that are costly or embarrassing. Later, I had the opportunity to address ones that improve profit or performance in other ways.
Lynn Kellen had a special talent for attracting useful nerds like myself. The first was Helmut Golda. A German import, he worked for JKH, then Edward Weck, before Med Link. Golda designed the DZ801, DZI811, and Z880. I took over just before the Z880 went into production. He was a form-follows-function kind of guy, as I am. I shepherded Helmut’s work through 13 revisions since then, all backward-compatible to his original design. Neither of us believes in a device with an End Of Life (EOL). We design for keeps.
Lynn Kellen’s vision
The intertwining of Lynn’s direct, goal-driven style, and useful nerds, resulted in a beautiful design philosophy. It is timeless, elegant and legible. Lynn developed the specifications for each revision of Med Link microscope, through consultation with the surgeons she met as a sales representative for Bristol-Myers Squibb. She concentrated on pioneers, innovators and those with the best reputations. Dr. Robert Allen, MD, and Dr. Harry Buncke, MD come to mind most readily. Lynn listened to them, and developed a short needs list, and a longer “don’t need” list, which she issued to Helmut.
The results
Helmut made a beautiful device, devoid of ornamental parts. Everything on a Med Link microscope looks like what it does. Every proprietary part is made of substantial, corrosion-resistant metal, if practicable. Purpose is evident in every simple, geometric line. From the start, Med Link Medical was committed exclusively to this tiny niche, a niche so small that our only direct competition in terms of features, went out of production more than 12 years ago. This allowed a simpler device, with fewer compromises.
DZ801
Lynn meant the DZ801 to be everything the reconstructive microsurgeon needs, and nothing they don’t. A 200mm focal length gave the surgeon room to work under the objective lens. Dual binoculars (one for the surgeon and one for the assistant) could each rotate 140 degrees. This allowed the surgeons to sit across from one another, or side by side. A 3″ fine focus range and 4×12″ XY translation arm gave great flexibility in aiming the scope. A typical anastomosis could then be performed without repositioning of the column or arm.
Each surgeon could choose their own magnification through independent 5:1 zoom mechanisms. A 100 Watt Xenon Halogen illuminator lit up the surgical site through a bifurcated fiberoptic bundle. This generated an ideal color spectrum to render detail, color, depth and stereopsis in a microsurgical setting. The 20″ column travel let the surgeons work seated or standing. Surgeons could operate all fine controls electrically, via footswitches. This allowed the surgeons to work with both hands. All this without the need to swap out one assembly for another!
DZI811
The DZI811 followed closely on the DZ801, after a chorus of surgeons requested tilting binoculars, so surgeons could see from different heights. Now a tall surgeon could work side by side with a short surgeon. The head could be tilted to look down at an angle, and the binoculars could still point in a good direction for both surgeons. Still no need to swap out parts!
Z880
The Z880 was inspired, as I recall, by Harry Buncke, MD, who really wanted handswitches. We extended the focal length to 250mm for an even more spacious working area. Med Link units were seeing ever more intense usage by ever bigger OR’s. It became clear that certain facets of the design needed toughening up. We also faced ever more production pressure. I did my best to make the microscopes quick and easy to assemble as well. I am particularly proud of my work on the electronics, the arm brakes, and the column. In the Z880 guise, Lynn’s brainchild was hardened and tempered into the solid, dependable fixture it is today.
Medlink has always resisted adding gratuitous features just to market something new. Consequently, its product developed a reputation as a relatively inexpensive surgical microscope, despite its superiority for its purpose. For twenty years I worked to increase reliability and buildability. Over my tenure the Medlink microscope developed a reputation as the most reliable surgical microscope in many hospitals.
How Medlink USA ended
For more than three years near the end of her life on 3 April 2017, Lynn Kellen suffered from cancer. She was frequently out of commission for weeks. Over time, she fell behind in running the company. Checks, invoices, forms, piled up. When her son took over the company, it was going to be a herculean feat to recover. He persisted at it for a little more than a year, but the climb was too steep.
ML Surgical Microscope Services and Lynn Kellen’s legacy
Since 2006, when Med Link Medical, Inc. reorganized into Medlink USA, I have worked as a consultant, not an employee. I have always kept very thorough personal records to enable me to perform my duties efficiently and well. While Medlink USA has ceased all operations and communication, a hard core of dedicated former employees remain equipped to continue support for the equipment. Our name is ML Surgical Microscope Services. New management, different tax ID, none of the same owners.
I love this machine and the philosophy behind it. I see the highest beauty in things that work excellently, and do not pretend to be more or less than what they are. It is my honor to be the one who tends this flock. Thank you, Lynn Kellen, for its existence.
-Paul Ashman, Senior Engineer.