SRI International was founded in 1946 as the Stanford Research Institute, the company's name until 1977. SRI International is an independent, non-profit research institute that conducts client-supported research and development for government agencies, commercial businesses and non-profit foundations. To help bring its innovations to the marketplace, SRI licenses its technologies and creates new ventures. SRI provides solutions to a wide range of clients in information, communications, and engineering technologies; pharmaceuticals and biotechnology; chemistry and physics; and the public policy areas of education, health, and economic development. SRI International owns the subsidiary, Sarnoff. Sarnoff specializes in creating and commercializing innovative electronic, biomedical and information technologies. Sarnoff and SRI have been involved in the creation of more than 20 spin-off companies - all of which are focused on leveraging core technologies created in new, commercial applications. In the biomedical field, these spin-offs include Intuitive Surgical (founded in 1995 to develop minimally invasive surgical instrumentation and techniques), Pangene (founded in 1993, focused on services, products and drug development using its Enhanced Homologous Recombination (EHR) technology platform), Locus Discovery (uses computational algorithms and supercomputer technology for drug discovery), Orchid BioSciences (developing pharmacogenetics and microfluidics platform technologies), and Songbird Hearing (selling the world's first disposable hearing aid), SRI International has offices throughout the US, and in Korea and Japan.