Brainlab

Brainlab

Brainlab headquarters in Feldkirchen, Germany
Type	AG
Traded as	BrainLAB AG
Industry	Medical technology
Founded	1989 (1989) in Munich, Germany
Founder	Stefan Vilsmeier
Headquarters	Munich, Germany
Number of locations	17 (2014)
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Rainer Birkenbach, Joseph Doyle, Stephan Holl
Products	Medical technology for image-guided surgery, radiation oncology and medical image exchange
Brands	Novalis® Radiosurgery, ExacTrac® Patient Positioning, Vero® SBRT

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, craniomaxillofacial (CMF) surgery, spine surgery, and trauma surgery. Brainlab also develops digitally integrated operating rooms and cloud-based medical image sharing solutions.

Brainlab has been privately held since its formation in Munich in 1989.

History

1989-1998: Early Years

Brainlab was founded by CEO Stefan Vilsmeier in Munich in 1989. Vilsmeier, then 17, laid the ground for the company with the proceeds from a book he published about 3D graphics. The first Brainlab product was planning software for stereotactic biopsies and procedures, which had a very limited market and was 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 within the skull during surgery.

After a disappointing initial partnership in 1992, 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. 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.

In 1995, the first customer workshops were held. In 1996, with about 25 employees, Brainlab signed 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.

In the early 2000s, the US offices were relocated to Redwood, California and then to their current location in Westchester, Illinois.

1998-2007: 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.

In 2002, 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. In 2004, Brainlab launched ExacTrac X-Ray Patient Positioning System in an effort to improve radiosurgery treatment accuracy with X-Ray verification.

During this time offices in Madrid, Hong Kong, Paris, Sao Paulo, Milan, London, Tokyo, Delhi, Dubai, Kuala Lampur and Sydney also opened.

2007-2010: Focus on Development

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,^[3] 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 radiotherapy and image-guided surgery products. Such products include Red Dot award-winner Curve Image Guided Surgery,^[4] Kick Purely Navigation and Dash Smart Instrument Technologies for iPod Touch-based orthopedic surgery.^[5] Brainlab is also the exclusive distributor of Airo® Mobile Intraoperative CT, developed and manufactured by Mobius Imaging, LLC.

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.^[6] Brainlab is currently constructing a new headquarters in the Munich suburb of Riem, due to be completed in early 2017.

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 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).^[7] 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.

Stefan Vilsmeier

Stefan Vilsmeier, a self-taught computer programmer, is the founder and CEO of Brainlab. Vilsmeier wrote a textbook about 3D software titled 3D Design with Giga-CAD Plus on the C64/C128^[8] 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.^[9] Also in 2002, the World Economic Forum (WEF) selected Vilsmeier as one of their Global Leaders for Tomorrow 2003.^[10]

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 including a new logo and 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 with clinicians in the fields of surgery and radiation therapy and its 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 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.

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. Buzz 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 ^[11] 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.^[12]

References

External links

• Brainlab website