Ytimekkäästi.
Onesys Oy perustettiin vuonna 1991 kehittämään ja myöhemmin kaupallistamaan ensimmäisen sukupolven kirurgista navigaattori-järjestelmää, eli Oulu Neuronavigator Systemiä (ONESYS).
Tarinamme alkoi edellämainitun projektin muodossa, jota yritys hallinnoi ja teki yhteistyössä erään neurokirurgian klinikan kanssa Oulun Yliopistollisen Keskussairaalan tiloissa.
ONESYS-projektin aikana muodostettiin teollisia, akateemisia ja kaupallisia verkostoja jotka mahdollistavat yrityksen T&K-toiminnan.
Force majeure 2009 lamaannutti yrityksen toiminnan vuosiksi, josta nyt palaudumme.
Tällä hetkellä kehitämme tai kaupallistamme kolmea tuotetta:
3. sukupolven "säästeliästä" kirurgista navigaatiojärjestelmää köyhiin maihin;
Onesys Navigator-ohjelmiston mobiilinatiivia ohjelmistoa eli Onesys Mobile Navigatoria, jolla mahdollistamme maailman ensimmäisen, älylaitteen kokoluokkaan suunnitellun ja toteutetun potilastietojärjestelmäliitännäisen, sekä
Ankkurimagneettia, eli 0.23T matalakenttämagneettia intraoperatiiviseen ja yleiskuvantamiseen, yleiskuvantaminen suunniteltu etenkin LMICs-käyttöön.
Yrityksen vaiheista, historiasta, tämänhetkisistä rasitteista ja tulevaisuudesta voit lukea alta, englanniksi.
Chapter 1.
Hi reader.
Glad you're here.
"What is Onesys?"
Many ask us this question. We've never really bothered with storytelling, we just sort of do things and worry about the story afterwards.
But this is the age of stories, narratives and vision.
So it'd be remiss for us not to tell ours.
What follows is - though this might be difficult to accept - a small sampling of our work in medical technology.
Our story began as is the case with many great companies, with a "simple problem" that demanded a complex solution.
The first problem: "In order to operate, I have to know where the tumor is. I can't see it."
Our first patent. US5413573A, 1995. The technology described herein is a so-called "passive arm robot" or as we call it internally "a first-generation surgical navigator" which has since been replaced by second-generation navigators which are based on optical, typically twin camera IR systems.
Figure 1 showcases the arm itself, but it's in figures 2 through 4 that you will find the kind of thinking that set us apart then and sets us apart today.
The second problem: "How do you get 200lbs of steel and corners into an OR clean room, and keep it disinfected between operations?"
Answer: Plastic bags, magnets and smart machine interfaces.
We proved that plastic and magnets allow for the transfer of electrical current and, crucially, data in the form of sensor readings.
We weren't the first to get a machine into the OR. But we were one of the first to do it in a way that made practical sense. Entire generations of surgical apparatuses are based on this, our approach.
Onesys is thankful to the many great minds who took part in our early years and continue to support us to this day.
More on these individuals will follow in the future.
Let's keep things simple. This navigator is simply a mouse.
An XYZ pointer. You point the instrument at a thing, the computer figures out what your orientation is in relation to that thing by translating your movements in real space into movements in virtual space in relation to an imaged thing.
2D images -> 3D construct (but let's not get ahead of ourselves, yet)
Without this the navigator is sort of like your mouse without a computer screen: Pointless.
So you need a way for a physical pointer to interact with a virtual image. A 3D image. You also need a way to render 2D images as 3D images (because 3D scanners are still almost entirely theoretical), store those images in some form of memory (typically RAM) and.. Well. I did promise to keep things simple.
That sounds like a patentable idea though.
US2007032720A1, 2007.
End Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
You're still here?
Good.
You might be wondering: "What exactly is Onesys doing now that is relevant?"
What we've always done.
Invent new things.
Enter, the third problem:
"Now that digital systems are coming and analog storage is on the way out, how can we keep information accessible, interoperable and usable?"
You see, in building the surgical navigator, we were given a choice:
1. Build a system to store images on a server somewhere (because as you recall from Chapter 1, the navigator can't work without images: A pointer doesn't work without something to point at or against), i.e.
PACS -> Our server, or
DICOM -> Our server, or
2. Something else.
Instead by using existing servers, health records and archives and accessing images directly, we built an integrator - a server-client software suite which truly incorporates data from any source.
We call it the Onesys Navigator. Because it allows a physician to navigate even complex medical histories and share the gained insight with others.
It began as a means to an end: Making the surgical navigator practically usable in any hospital with minimal installation necessary.
Little did we know just how much EHRs would change medical care. How difficult it would become for data of any kind to be moved even from one hospital unit to the next (from radiologists to oncologists, for instance), let alone one HIS to another.
The ON continues to be the only scalable solution to this problem, with the above in mind.
That sounds like a patentable idea.
US20070266046A1, 2007.
What's it look like?
Like this. Click to enlarge.
In the image you can see:
On the bottom-left, "Workspace History" refers to previous ON workspace instances, as they relate to this Case. We'd love to tell you more about Cases.
Above it on the top-right, you see "Annotations", this is free-form text entry, diagnostic notes and such things which allows for the physician to collect the relevant, pertinent information into one glance.
We'd love to tell you more about pertinent information.
Above this, 2D and 3D Images. Our software comes with an inbuilt 3D rendering engine which allows a clinician or a surgeon to render 2D PACS/DICOM as interactive 3D slides.
We'd love to tell you more about why this is incredibly useful.
To the right, we see "Snapshots." These are source data from other archives such as images, labs and so forth. Anything from volumetric tumor growth curves over time to simple 2D PACS/DICOM image studies or 3D renderings thereof.
Snapshots come with inbuilt functionalities such as thumbnails, time of snapshot and the name given to the snapshot describing perhaps the reason or the finding.
Once information - whether text, image or lab in nature - has been collected into such a "workspace" (imaged), these workspaces can be saved, shared and exported. Sharing and export differ in the sense, that a Shared workspace allows others to make Instances into the Case, whereas Export merely contains the content and no ability to edit.
The doctor uses the workspace as the first and last point in the diagnostic process and this eliminates as much as 90% of frivolous busywork of finding "that one image" from a set of 30, or reading through page after page of "potentially useful" information again and again, looking for the relevant bits.
The worst case scenario is that someone still has to go through the above ordeal for old data, but only one person has to do it and only once. Even this is huge progress.
The ON allows physicians down the road to familiarize themselves with patient cases that might have decades worth of data associated with them, in as little as 5 minutes.
The time saved is immense.
Another added benefit is the ability to keep everyone in the loop - doctors could be given for instance a copy of the diagnostic process for a patient, which allows for training and education to take place. When sending a patient to a hospital, the GP gains valuable insight.
End Chapter 2.
FORCE MAJEURE
Not a happy chapter.
In 2009 the company was hit by a lot.
A catastrophic accident disabling the acting CEO in the middle of Global Financial Crisis put us in a dark place.
This led to soul-searching followed by bootstrapping.
Chapter 3.
Welcome to now.
As of 2022, we intend to build on our past experience and success, while learning from our mistakes.
The Onesys of today has 3, vertically integrated segments: Health information system interoperability, surgical navigation, and surgical imaging.
We are one of many health information system interoperability companies, one of a handful of surgical navigation companies, and the first-ever company to specialize in surgical imaging.