Milestones
Ultrasound
The roots of Onesys Oy go back to 1980, when the neurosurgery research unit of Oulu University Central Hospital, in cooperation with the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Oulu, set out to develop ultrasound modules, with the aim of determining: can ultrasound imaging detect differences between a tumor and healthy brain tissue?
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Yes.
iUS/IOUS
Oulu University Hospital was the first in Finland to purchase an ultrasound system for neurosurgery. The use of a radiological system was so novel at the time, that for the first few multi-hour operations a radiologist would come and sit in as a kind of moral support.
Stereolithography
The use of a surgical navigator can lead to many ways of interacting with images. We developed a superior manner of generating 3D constructs from 2D images from the PACS vendor-neutrally, with a high enough fidelity that the constructs could be printed with stereolithography.
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Orders for 3D "casts" of heads with a tumor or aneurysm marked out were placed from as far as Australia.
Founding, 1991
The research group discovered that images of the brain could be used not only for diagnostics and pre-operative planning, but also for real-time navigation. Problem: How to determine accuracy or precision in relation to the region of surgical interest?
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Onesys would go on to invent some of the first GUIs, approaches and principles that became gold standard for IGS. Unique to our approach was the ability to verify the accuracy of the neuronavigator in real-time.
iMRI
Oulu University Hospital was among the first in the world to acquire an intraoperative MRI system for neurosurgery. We integrated an arm-based robot to the system and showcased proof of concept.
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20 years later today, some robotic arms have been made for similar use-cases.
Force majeure
CEO Pirjo Koivukangas suffers a catastrophic fall and professor John Koivukangas retires from his position as professor at the university. For 10 years the company was bootstrapped.
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In 2015 some of the original work was credited by the AANS as being particularly ahead of its time.
Re-Start
From 2015-2017 we explored whether a re-start is feasible. With a minimal budget and a clearly-defined need, we developed the Onesys Medical Card as a novel new medium for medical information sharing.
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The OMC is currently available in Finland as a means of transmitting information between a patient's care team and a pharmacy, where the two do not possess an interoperable information system.
Divestment
The original ONS was commercialized jointly with the Swedish medtech company Elekta, to which all rights were eventually sold. Elekta further divested the venture to Medtronic, and the Onesys-Medtronic relationship began.
2021
Professor John Koivukangas retires from his emeritus tasks to focus fully on Onesys again.
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We're active in 3 synergistic domains:
Surgical navigation, surgical imaging, and medical information system workflows.​
Contact form
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We can help in:
Interoperability of health information
Medical information system integration
GUIs
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We also offer:
Strategic partnerships, SDKs, mutual development of IPR