Elekta acquires Medical Intelligence

By acquiring Medical Intelligence Medizintechnik GmbH (MI), Elekta reinforces its leadership in stereotactic radiation therapy (SRT) of the body and in providing complete solutions for image guided radiation therapy (IGRT) that address the clinical problems of patient and organ movement. MI brings to the Elekta Group a portfolio of advanced and patent protected products with rapid sales growth, a track record of clinically relevant innovation and a development group focused on patient handling and positioning. The acquisition will create opportunities to develop more integrated products that in the future will complete and further differentiate Elekta's IGRT and SRT solutions. MI was founded ten years ago by Christian Hieronimi and Michael Vogele, MD, who both will remain with the company after the acquisition. The company, now a 100% owned subsidiary of Elekta, has 33 employees and its headquarters in Schwabmünchen, Germany. MI is a world-leading supplier of advanced and innovative radiation oncology and interventional guidance products for precise and reliable patient positioning and treatment. The company's product lines include non-invasive immobilization and positioning systems and also robotic treatment couches. Elekta expects the acquisition to add annualized revenues of EUR 10-12 million in the first year and be neutral to slightly accretive to Elekta's earnings per share. “This is a highly complementary acquisition and Medical Intelligence fits extremely well into the Elekta Group”, says Tomas Puusepp, President and CEO of Elekta. “MI's cutting edge technology for patient positioning and immobilization is an excellent addition to Elekta's world-leading solutions for advanced radiation therapy. By welcoming all MI employees into the Elekta Group, we reinforce and secure Elekta's technology leadership in the rapidly developing markets of SRT and IGRT. MI will also become Elekta's center of excellence for development of patient handling, positioning and immobilization solutions”, Tomas Puusepp concludes. The last few years have seen a very rapid development of IGRT, with several linear accelerator (linac) manufacturers having some form of IGRT system in development or clinical use. From using these systems the radiation oncology community has seen – literally – that treatment targets are often not in the best position for treatment. This, in turn, is driving the need for additional equipment that will: - support the patient securely in the treatment machine and at the same time allow high quality imaging. - prevent the patient from accidentally moving during treatment. - make automatic fine adjustments of the patient's position with high accuracy, with the capability to make rotational corrections as well as translational ones. MI's product portfolio explicitly addresses all of these needs, and most products are already in clinical use with all current designs of IGRT linac systems. The most recent innovative product from MI is HexaPOD™ RTC, an image guided robotic patient positioning system that provides patient positioning with six degrees of freedom (6D) and sub-millimeter accuracy. 6D means that the system can correct rotational errors in patient positioning as well as translational (x,y,z) errors, making it ideal for the very high accuracy required for stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and stereotactic radiation therapy (SRT). HexaPOD™ will thus be an important and integral part of Elekta's solution for SRT. As well as HexaPOD™, several of MI's products such as BodyFIX™ for precise patient immobilization and iBeam™ carbon fiber table top, are the preferred choices of advanced users of linacs from all suppliers. The popularity of these products with clinical end users has lead to more and more third party companies selling MI products, including some through formal OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers) agreements. As part of Elekta's commitment to open systems and to provide as many clinical users as possible with access to these first class products, MI will continue to supply its Medical Intelligence brand products to all suppliers of radiation therapy solutions and also seek to establish new OEM agreements. Under the continued leadership of its co-founders, the Medical Intelligence brand identity will continue to stand for the technical innovation, clinical value, organizational focus, and entrepreneurial spirit that have produced these successful products. Within the Elekta Group, MI's strong R&D team will continue the development of positioning and immobilization technology, including the optimizing of workflow and software interfaces to Elekta Synergy® and MOSAIQ™, Elekta's image enabled electronic medical record developed by its subsidiary IMPAC. As an Elekta company, the reach of the sales network, the distribution of spare parts and consumables and the service capacity for MI's products are all dramatically increased and together with Elekta's world-class linac and information management systems, MI's patient handling products form a very strong joint offering. “We are eagerly looking forward to team up with Elekta and to build further on the already strong relationship that we have between our companies”, says Christian Hieronimi, co-founder and CEO of Medical Intelligence. “With the emergence of image guided treatment solutions such as Elekta Synergy and the precision and accuracy that are now possible, radiation oncologists all over the world are now seeking automated and clinically viable solutions for ultra precise patient positioning. And within the Elekta family, Medical Intelligence will keep leading this development”, concludes Dr Michael Vogele, the other co-founder of Medical Intelligence.