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Baxter Corporation

For more than sixty years, Baxter Corporation has been a major presence in the Canadian health care community. At any given moment in hospitals, clinics or homes across the country, Baxter’s medical products and services are improving and saving people's lives. Premature infants receive vital medications and nutrients from Baxter's intravenous solutions and infusion pumps; trauma victims receive lifesaving blood and blood components that have been collected and processed with Baxter's storage and separation systems; kidney disease patients live vital, active lives with Baxter's leading dialysis therapies and individuals with inherited blood disorders, like hemophilia, can live longer, healthier lives using Baxter’s therapeutic blood proteins.

First incorporated in 1937 as Baxter Laboratories of Canada, the company began with seven people producing intravenous solutions in a rented building in Toronto. Today, the company employs more than eight hundred people across Canada. The Canadian headquarters are in Mississauga, Ontario, with regional offices in Burnaby, British Columbia, and Pointe Claire, Quebec. Award-winning manufacturing facilities are located in Alliston, Ontario and Sherbrooke, Quebec. The global headquarters for Baxter International are located in Deerfield, Illinois. www.Baxter.com

The success of this company can be traced to its market leadership and manufacturing excellence within three core businesses: Renal Therapy, Medication Delivery, and BioSciences.

Market Leadership

In 1939, the company introduced the first sterile vacuum-type blood collection container, making blood-banking practical for the first time. In 1956, Baxter introduced the first commercially built artificial kidney machine,  making life-saving dialysis therapy a reality for people suffering from kidney disease. Then in 1966, Baxter introduced the first commercially produced Factor VIII concentrate to treat hemophilia. In 1970, the Alliston plant became the first facility in the world to manufacture a plastic container for IV solutions, eliminating the safety concerns with respect to glass containers. Other "firsts" over the years have included the introduction of continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis as an alternative to hemodialysis, the first "needleless" system for IV therapy to protect health-care workers from needle-stick accidents and the first automated blood-cell separator, setting a new standard for the collection of cellular blood components.

With the company investing a million dollars per day in research and development, they are investing in the future. A future that includes Baxter researchers working to enhance the safety of the blood supply with technologies to inactivate pathogens in collected blood components. A future that includes genetically engineering animal organs for transplant into humans. A future that includes new genetically engineered hemoglobin therapeutics and improved vaccines for the prevention of a variety of infectious diseases.

Manufacturing Excellence

Baxter Corporation prides itself on its manufacturing excellence. The Baxter plant in Alliston, Ontario, won the National Quality Institute’s Canada Award for Excellence, Large Manufacturing in 1996. Baxter is the first company in the health care sector to ever win this award. In 1997, the Sherbrooke facility was honoured to receive the "Qualimètre" Award. In 1998, the Sherbrooke plant was named "Plant of the Year" by the Maison Régionale de l’Industrie and won the  prestigious "Grand Prix québécois de la qualité" in 1999.

Underlying the company’s expertise is passion…the passion to advance the frontiers of medicine. The passion to bring life-saving therapies to patients. The passion to listen to its customers, and bring them solutions to the challenges they face everyday.

The company can be reached at:
Baxter Corporation
4 Robert Speck Parkway, Suite 700
Mississauga, Ontario
L4Z 3Y4

Telephone: 
(905) 270-1125
1-800-387-8399

http://www.baxter.ca

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