Nexstim Plc
Nexstim was established in 2000 to commercialise the opportunity of adding navigation to an existing transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) technology. The founders believed that navigation and making the TMS visible with the help of navigation is a crucial aspect for the emerging TMS technology to become a clinical tool for patient treatment. Nexstim offers navigated brain stimulation solutions which help diagnose and treat with confidence, even in the most challenging brain diseases and disorders. Nexstim NBS and NBT Systems are used at over 100 facilities worldwide for neurosurgical planning, multiple therapies and research.
Company details
Find locations served, office locations and our distributors
- Business Type:
- Manufacturer
- Industry Type:
- Medical Equipment
- Market Focus:
- Globally (various continents)
- Year Founded:
- 2000
About us
We are committed to only offering technology solutions solidly grounded in scientific and clinical research. We closely collaborate with key opinion leaders who like us, believe TMS can harness the brain's own healing power—neuroplasticity.
Our Mission, Our Vision and Our Values
We are committed to only offering technology solutions solidly grounded in scientific and clinical research. We closely collaborate with key opinion leaders who like us, believe TMS can harness the brain's own healing power—neuroplasticity.
By making the transcranial magnetic stimulation electric field visible and reproducible, we enable personalized and effective therapies and diagnostics for challenging brain diseases and disorders.
Our vision
To be the new standard of care for treating a host of currently intractable brain diseases and disorders. Personalised TMS is giving back patients – and their families – the life they feared they had lost.
Strategy
Strategic focus on large therapy indications with unmet need
Nexstim has a unique proprietary neuronavigated TMS technology called SmartFocus® TMS that delivers diagnostics and therapy for patients with brain diseases and disorders.
Nexstim has a platform TMS technology with multiple applications and position as a premium priced system differentiated by e-field navigation. In diagnostics we have already over 170 installed NBS Systems around the world and now we are focused on maximising the potential of SmartFocus® TMS in therapy.
TherapyObjective: recurring revenue optimization through existing installed base and profitable new system growth in major depressive disorder (MDD) and chronic neuropathic pain. Launching a new severe depression indication business based on an accelerated therapy protocol.
- Therapy Scope: Leverage this platform technology around selected therapeutic indications in selected markets (focus in the USA & EU) with new and existing TMS service providers:
- Treatment of MDD and severe depression
- Treatment of chronic neuropathic pain
Objective: recurring revenue growth through existing strong installed base and new sales development mainly through strategic partnerships
- Diagnostic Scope: Further develop this technology around motor and speech mapping of the brain in selected diagnostic indications in selected markets (focus in the USA & EU) with the world’s leading hospitals:
- Preprocedural planning for difficult brain tumour and epilepsy patients
- Planning for patients undergoing radiotherapy for brain tumour
These selected diagnostic and therapeutic applications represent indications where:
- Nexstim technology demonstrates recognisable clinical outcome and customer profitability
- Hospital inpatient treatments are usually required
- Integrated and easy to use navigated TMS device enables a future platform in other indications from day one
History
Making the TMS visible and reproducible
Nexstim was established in 2000 to commercialise the opportunity of adding navigation to an existing transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) technology. The founders believed that navigation and making the TMS visible with the help of navigation is a crucial aspect for the emerging TMS technology to become a clinical tool for patient treatment.
The Company founders, led by professor Risto Ilmoniemi, were researchers in the Helsinki University of technology that has a long tradition in the multidisciplinary research of biomagnetism and neuroscience.
In the 1990’s Professor Ilmoniemi, then a researcher in the Helsinki University of Technology, was already well known for his work with multichannel magnetoencephalography (MEG) instruments. He was interested in improving transcranial magnetic stimulation and in developing a multichannel TMS instrument.
An opportunity to this came when Prof. Ilmoniemi started as the director of BioMag Laboratory which was, and still is, a joint laboratory between the Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki University and Helsinki University Hospital.
The research group led by Ilmoniemi understood that we can calculate the stimulating electric field in the brain induced by the magnetic field around the TMS coil; the calculated E-field makes the whole process visible.
Eventually, it was time to start a company so that the opportunities presented by the research group could be commercialized. Nexstim was established in 2000 to make TMS visible, accurate and reproducible.
Providing consistency requires integration
Over time, we at Nexstim learnt that accurate, consistent TMS can only be provided by integrating all system components so that the software knows and controls the hardware. We decided that all the components must be developed, manufactured or controlled by ourselves – otherwise we could not guarantee the level of accuracy and reproducibility where we believe lies the key thing of using TMS as a clinical tool.
The accuracy of our SmartFocus® TMS technology was first validated in the field of neurosurgery: We received FDA clearance for motor mapping in 2009 and FDA clearance for speech mapping in 2012. We are still the only company to have these FDA clearances in motor and speech mapping.
Transforming TMS in the therapy use
The FDA clearances and CE marks in mapping established a regulatory base and market foundation for the use of the technology in other more commercially profitable therapy markets, such as depression and pain.
Our NBT® system has been launched in the US for the treatment of major depressive disorder following clearance from the FDA for marketing and commercial distribution for this indication in 2017. The NBT® system is CE-marked in Europe for the treatment of major depression and chronic neuropathic pain.
We are proud to have our roots in the long tradition on the multidisciplinary research of biomagnetism and neuroscience in the Helsinki area universities. With this historical background we are committed to offering only such technology solutions that are solidly grounded in scientific and clinical research. By making the TMS E-field visible and reproducible, we enable personalized and effective therapies and diagnostics for challenging brain disorders.