Milestones
Ultrasound
The roots of Onesys go back to 1980, when the neurosurgical 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 whether ultrasound imaging could be bused to differentiate between tumor and healthy brain tissue.
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 a radiologist would attend the operations.
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 MRI / CT images 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 central solutions and principles that became gold standard for image-guided neurosurgery today. Unique to our approach was/is 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 central to modernr image guided neurosurgery.
Re-Start
​Starting in 2017-2019, we've resumed our effort to develop our software solutions. One challenge with patient information is how to transmit it, when two units do not share an interoperable structure for medical records. To alleviate this problem, we developed a smartcard based solution called the Onesys Medical Card (OMC) based on a contact chip, AES-256 encryption, and QR-codes.
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The OMC is currently available in Finland as a means of storing and transferring pertinent medical information at the velocity of the patient.
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 position as emeritus to focus on Onesys.
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Onesys offers EMR+ software products to increase the productivity and usability of modern medical information systems, and dedicates its efforts to advancing modern neuronavigation and intraoperative imaging.
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