Brainlab

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Brainlab AG is a German medical technology company headquartered in Munich, Bavaria that develops medical technology for image-guided surgery, radiation oncology and medical image exchange. Although originally focused primarily on software, Brainlab also produces hardware platform technology to expand the functionality of software applications.

Brainlab focuses on creating medical technology for the fields of neurosurgery, radiation oncology, orthopedic surgery, ENT surgery, CMF surgery, spine surgery, and trauma surgery. Brainlab also develops digitally integrated operating rooms and cloud-based medical image sharing.

Privately held since its formation in Munich in 1989, Brainlab has more than 5,000 systems installed in about 95 countries and employs 1,150 people in 17 offices worldwide.

History

Brainlab was founded by CEO Stefan Vilsmeier in Munich in 1989. Vilsmeier, then 17, laid the ground for the enterprise with a book he published about 3D graphics, which became a bestseller in its category. Vilsmeier setup his fledgling company, Brainlab, in his parent’s home using the proceeds from his book.

1989-1998: Early Years

The first product that Vilsmeier developed under Brainlab was planning software for stereotactic biopsies and procedures. The product itself had a very limited market so Vilsmeier expanded to include stereotactic radiosurgery using linear accelerators. In 1990, one year after its inception, Brainlab GmbH premiered the company’s first commercial mouse-controlled, menu-driven surgical planning and navigation software at the University of Vienna. The software used X-Ray and tomography images to create a digital navigation system for the body, assisting surgeons in visualizing cranial anatomy. This software also allowed surgeons to ‘track’ their surgical instruments down to the millimeter within the skull during surgery.

After a disappointing initial partnership in 1992 that threatened the fledgling company, Vilsmeier designed and built a tradeshow booth and booked exhibitor’s space at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) Annual Scientific Meeting in Washington, D.C. to showcase his software innovation. A few weeks later, Vilsmeier attended the American Society for Therapeutic Radiation and Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting in San Diego, bringing the future customer base of Brainlab into focus.

After expanding into the field of radiotherapy, the first patient treatments began in 1993 in the United States, Taiwan and South Africa. Shortly thereafter in 1994, Brainlab opened its first US office in Albany, New York, followed by the opening of Brainlab Beijing.

The first wave of new hires came in 1995 during this expansion period. That same year, the first customer workshops were held, drawing good attendance, which proved to be the beginning of the company’s establishment within its various fields.

In 1996, with about 25 employees, Brainlab cemented its place in the U.S. market with the signing of a comprehensive contract with Varian, Inc.. Together, Brainlab and Varian developed and distributed a micro multi-leaf collimator for use in radiosurgery. By October 1996, Brainlab and Varian revealed their working prototype at CNS and ASTRO that year; by November of the same year the first treatments were underway.

Formalized marketing and commercialization efforts were also established in 1996, as Vilsmeier had been creating all marketing materials himself up until this point. A Chicago agency was contracted to produce new marketing initiatives, and four months later, two agency team members became Brainlab employees.

Despite developing prototypes since 1992, Brainlab officially expanded into the field of image-guided surgery in 1996. To facilitate navigation, Brainlab developed its passive marker technology,[1] which would become the market standard for optical tracking systems. The first Brainlab surgical navigation platform, VectorVision®, gained clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1997. This platform was designed to improve the usability and capability of the existing Brainlab software offering.

The US offices were relocated to Redwood, California in the early 2000s and then moved to their current offices in Westchester, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

1998-2006: Beginning of Brainlab AG

In 1998, Brainlab became public limited company (German: Aktiengesellschaft (AG)) and put in place both a supervisory board, made up of shareholders and the management board, and the managing board (German: Vorstand). The managing board at Brainlab today consists of: Stefan Vilsmeier, founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO); Rainer Birkenbach, Executive Vice President Research and Development; Joseph Doyle, Chief Financial Officer (CFO); and Stephan Holl, Chief Operating Officer (COO).

In the product development area, Brainlab took a leap forward with the launch of Novalis® Radiosurgery in 1998. A spokesperson for the product was found in Lance Armstrong,[2] professional cyclist, who had battled testicular cancer in 1996. After winning the Tour de France in 1999, Armstrong made an appearance at the Brainlab booth at CNS to sign autographs.

After a lengthy legal battle in 2000, Vilsmeier briefly considered selling Brainlab. Vilsmeier had, however, had received much recognition, including becoming the youngest recipient of the prestigious Bavarian Order of Merit for his efforts,[3] which kept Brainlab moving forward.

In 2002, capitalizing on the knowledge and experience Brainlab had already gained about image-guided navigation in neurosurgery, the company expanded into orthopedic image-guided surgery (IGS). A strategic partnership with DePuy (now DePuy Synthes) resulted in the first DePuy OEM IGS system, Ci™, which would be followed in subsequent years by other Brainlab-branded image-guided surgery systems. Other influential strategic partnerships also developed during this time.

Brainlab launched ExacTrac® X-Ray Patient Positioning System in 2004 in an effort to improve radiosurgery treatment accuracy with X-Ray verification.

Overall, the late 1990s and early 2000s proved to be a period of worldwide expansion for Brainlab. Offices in Madrid, Hong Kong, Paris, Sao Paulo, Milan, London, Tokyo, Delhi, Dubai, Kuala Lampur and Sydney opened during this time, transforming Brainlab into an international presence with market access across the globe.

2006-2010: Focus on Development

The year 2006 marked a turning point for Brainlab with crucial advancements and innovations in areas such as image-guided surgery.

In 2007 the company released Novalis Tx™ Radiosurgery, a radiotherapy system jointly created by Brainlab and Varian Medical Systems, Inc. A year later, Digital Lightbox® was brought to the market by Brainlab, allowing digital patient images to be viewed and manipulated in the operating room. Digital Lightbox has since undergone large scale changes and has morphed into the current product known as Buzz™ Digital O.R,[4] launched in 2012.

2010-Present: New Identity

In 2010, Brainlab underwent a major rebranding, beginning with the spelling of the company name: BrainLAB to Brainlab. The previous marketing tagline ‘unlocking possibilities’ was also replaced with the mission statement, ‘Together we are making medical technology and knowledge more impactful and accessible to physicians and their patients’—often shorted simply to ‘Together we’.

Since refreshing the brand, Brainlab has introduced several new products to the market with the goal of offering a more complete package for image-guided surgery and radiotherapy planning and positioning. Such products include Red Dot award-winner CurveTM Image Guided Surgery,[5] Kick® Purely Navigation, Dash® Smart Instrument Technologies for iPod® Touch-based orthopedic surgery [6] and Buzz™ Digital O.R., among others.

With the tendency to hire innovative employees from all fields of work, Brainlab has maintained its entrepreneurial style as it continues to develop technology.

As of 2013, all 10 of the top ranked hospitals for neurology and neurosurgery in the US, according to US News & World Report [7] use Brainlab surgical navigation systems.

Headquarters

Brainlab began in the parental home of CEO and founder, Stefan Vilsmeier, in 1989. By 1991, Brainlab had moved into its first official headquarters in the Munich suburb of Poing. After a wave of new hires in 1995, a larger space was needed and headquarters moved to the Bavarian town of Heimstetten, Germany. In 2006, Brainlab constructed and moved into its current headquarters in Feldkirchen, Germany, just outside of Munich. Edmund Stoiber, former minister-president of Bavaria, officially opened the new building in 2007.[8]

Products

Software

Brainlab is primarily a software company; with applications ranging from patient positioning in radiosurgery treatments to software-guided surgical navigation to cloud-based solutions to facilitate the exchange of secure medical images. The first software, which helped to establish Brainlab, was developed by CEO and founder, Stefan Vilsmeier, to put medical images to better use in the surgical suite. Today, Brainlab offers dozens of software applications in the fields of: oncology, specifically radiotherapy and radiosurgery; surgery, specifically, craniomaxillofacial (CMF), ENT, orthopedic, spine, trauma, and neurosurgery; integrated operating room solutions as well as image sharing and enhancement.

Hardware

Although hardware development existed at Brainlab as early as 1992, the first hardware system, the m3® Micro Multi-leaf Collimator, released in collaboration with Varian Medical Systems, came to market in 1996. Since its release, Brainlab has introduced several products into the radiotherapy market, such as Novalis® Radiosurgery (in collaboration with Varian), ExacTrac® Patient Positioning and most recently, Vero® SBRT (in collaboration with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries).[9] In 1997, Brainlab released its first image-guided surgery system, VectorVision, expanding into the surgical space. Since VectorVision, Brainlab has released numerous systems, including Kolibri, Curve™ Image Guided Surgery, Kick® Purely Navigation and Dash® Smart Instrument Technologies which uses an iPod® Touch as its navigation screen. Buzz™ Digital O.R., which developed out of the product Digital Lightbox®, is part of the operating room integration sector of Brainlab.

CEO and Founder: Stefan Vilsmeier

A self-taught computer programmer, Stefan Vilsmeier wrote a textbook about 3D software titled “3D Design with Giga-CAD Plus on the C64/C128” [10] at the age of 17. Shortly thereafter he enrolled at the Technical University of Munich but dropped out after two years and only 20 days on campus. At this point, Vilsmeier had already been invited to create 3D software programs for the neurosurgery department at the University of Vienna, Austria. Convinced he could find a better solution to questions of accuracy in neurosurgery, Vilsmeier took the proceeds of his book and founded Brainlab in 1989.

At the Bavarian Innovation Awards in 2000, Vilsmeier became the youngest recipient of the Bavarian Order of Merit. In 2001, Vilsmeier was awarded the national title of “Entrepreneur of the Year,” in the category of Information Technology, by Ernst & Young. The following year, Ernst & Young honored Vilsmeier again, this time with the title of “World Entrepreneur of the Year” at an awards event held in Monte Carlo.[11] Also in 2002, the World Economic Forum (WEF) selected Vilsmeier as one of their “Global Leaders for Tomorrow 2003.” [12]

Corporate Identity

Logo

Vilsmeier created the first marketing materials for Brainlab including the logo that was used from 1989 to 2010.

In 2010 the company embarked on a complete brand refresh inspired by the simplicity and user-friendly quality of Brainlab products. The streamlined logo came with new corporate colors. In addition to repositioning the company with a new logo, Brainlab adopted a new brand purpose to reflect the close partnerships built, developed and cultivated with thought leaders and clinicians in the fields of surgery and radiation therapy and a focus on patients.

Purpose

Brainlab used several brand purposes over the years, including ‘Mind, Vision, Action’ and ‘unlocking possibilities.’ The current company purpose is, "Together we are making medical technology and knowledge more impactful and accessible to physicians and their patients".

Business Units

Surgery

The surgery division at Brainlab focuses on using medical images, acquired either before or during the procedure, to create a digital map of the body in order to guide the surgeon. Brainlab creates products for various phases of surgery, from software for surgical planning, to software and systems for surgical navigation, to data management and manipulation as well as intraoperative imaging. Brainlab surgery software is designed for both complex and routine surgical procedures and is intended to be user-friendly and intuitive with touch screen operation and simplified workflows. Brainlab also concentrates on creating open platforms for surgeons to facilitate integration, and allow them to incorporate microscopes, endoscopes, and other tools into surgical navigation.

Radiotherapy/Radiosurgery

Similar to surgery, Brainlab radiotherapy/radiosurgery software and hardware also use medical images to facilitate accelerated and improved treatment planning, monitoring and verification. Various treatment software applications and hardware systems provide the ability to adjust or shape the radiation dose of linear accelerators (linac) during treatment. ExacTrac uses a fitted mask in conjunction with patient positioning software and hardware to accomplish desired accuracy. The room-based design tracks external patient movement and also detects and compensates for tumor movement during treatment. Vero® SBRT, launched in 2010, is a Brainlab radiation therapy treatment system created in cooperation with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which combines various radiosurgery technologies into one machine. Vero integrates imaging and patient positioning capabilities, image guidance and verification, and the first-of-its-kind gimbaled irradiation head with tilt functions so clinicians can deliver isocentric and non-isocentric treatment. Vero combines Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) and Image-Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT).

Data Sharing/Data Management

Brainlab develops several technologies, both hardware and software, to maximize and leverage patient data between surgeries and in the operating room. BuzzTM Digital O.R. is a touch screen data control and image enhancement tool mounted in the operating room used to view and alter data, as well as enable conferencing, video recording and device control in the operating room. Quentry®, a secure, cloud-based image sharing platform enables the exchange of image data between physicians.

Acquisitions

Voyant Health In 2011, Brainlab announced that it would acquire Voyant Health [13] to increase reach and distribution and to open a gateway for Voyant Health technology to enter new markets, such as neurosurgery and radiotherapy, in which Brainlab already had a significant presence.

VoyantHealth, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, was founded in 2003 with the goal of creating products to allow orthopedic surgeons to quickly and accurately perform pre-surgical templating using X-Ray images.

In 2009, Brainlab and Voyant Health began a partnership in order to improve the ease of clinician access to medical data to enable more effective planning. This collaboration lead to the realization that the Digital Lightbox® from Brainlab and Voyant Health’s main product, TraumaCad, a cloud-based orthopedic planning and templating software, could be combined to further enhance treatment planning.

The software technology behind VoyantLink and OrthoWeb, two cloud-based image sharing solutions created by Voyant Health, were incorporated into Quentry by Brainlab to expand its existing framework. Since the acquisition, TraumaCad, has come under the umbrella of the Brainlab orthopedic division. The Voyant Health division of Brainlab remains in Tel-Aviv.

Awards

In 2012, Curve by Brainlab, a surgical navigation system, won the Red Dot design award of the life science and medicine category.[14]

Partners

Brainlab partners with many organizations to enhance the company’s existing offering and to be able to provide customers with viable possibilities for integration with existing systems:

References

  1. ↑ "Introduction of the Passive Marker Neuronavigation System VectorVision"
  2. ↑ "New device beams hope in continuous cancer fight - Cyclist Lance Armstrong unveils new technology at Arundel medical center Annapolis"
  3. ↑ "TUM Entrepreneurs of Excellence"
  4. ↑ "Brainlab Introduces New Multi-Touch Surgical Information Hub"
  5. ↑ "Breakthrough In Guided Surgery Technology Launched By Brainlab"
  6. ↑ "USA Today - iPod-based navigation app helps doctor in surgery"
  7. ↑ "Top-Ranked Hospitals for Neurology & Neurosurgery"
  8. ↑ "(German) Bei Brainlab gibt sich Stoiber betont entspannt"
  9. ↑ "IGRT: introducing the next generation"
  10. ↑ "3D-Konstruktion mit GIGA-CAD Plus auf dem C64/C128 by Stefan Vilsmeier"
  11. ↑ "World Entrepreneur of the Year Award Past Winners - Ernst & Young
  12. ↑ "Movers and Shakers Interview with Stefan Vilsmeier, CEO – Brainlab"
  13. ↑ "Brainlab acquires Voyant Health Ltd."
  14. ↑ "Red Dot Product Design Winner Curve Surgical Navigation System"
  15. ↑ "The AO Foundation has approved three BrainLAB surgery modules for use on AO courses"
  16. ↑ "Brainlab Continues to Lead Orthopedic Computer Assisted Surgery Market with Biomet Partnership"
  17. ↑ "DePuy Synthes Spine and Brainlab Extend Collaboration to Advance Image-guided Spine Surgery"
  18. ↑ "Elekta to Incorporate Brainlab Patient Positioning Technology in Therapy Systems to Increase Comfort for Patients with Cancer"
  19. ↑ "GE Healthcare and Brainlab Working to Advance Integrated Surgical Suite Solutions"
  20. ↑ "Intel Capital Invests In Brainlab"
  21. ↑ "Brainlab First to Market with Integration of Leica Microsystems M720 OH5 Microscope for its Image-Guided Surgery Products"
  22. ↑ "MRI Interventions - Industry Partners"
  23. ↑ "Orthofix International Announces Integration with Brainlab Spinal Image Guided Surgery System"
  24. ↑ "Philips and Brainlab Partner to Provide Real-time 'Road Map' for Neurosurgeons at The Montreal Children’s Hospital"
  25. ↑ "S-CAPE | BRAINLAB Touch-Based Interactive Dicom Viewer [English]"
  26. ↑ "Smith & Nephew Orthopaedics and Brainlab announce exclusive computer-assisted surgery development agreement"
  27. ↑ "Ulrich Medical Partners"

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