Nordic Life Science 1
The long-term goal for Cerenion is to make C-Tren
d a globally adopted solution for continuous brain monitoring in intensive care the spark for an invention that was further investigated in a commercially-oriented research project, called BrainICU, which was funded by Business Finland (at that time, Tekes). “During this project it became evident that there is a clear end-user-driven need for a practical brain monitoring solution in the intensive care environment. The invention also raised a strong interest in the companies providing equipment for intensive care. These two things, together with our strong belief in our unique technology and our team, formed the basis for the decision to establish Cerenion,” says Timo Koskela, CEO and co-founder of Cerenion. The company’s patent-protected solution utilizes artificial intelligence to compress the complex EEG signal into a single parameter, C-Trend, revealing the status of the brain. This easyto-interpret parameter (ranging from 0 to 100) helps doctors in utilizing EEG in their everyday work to provide the best possible care to the patients. All four co-founders of Cerenion have research experience from the University of Oulu, and some of them have spent almost two decades at the university, so in many ways the founding of Cerenion was a big but an exciting change, according to Koskela. “First of all, everything is now more dynamic. We have a lot of freedom to choose how we run the company and how we conduct our daily work. But we also have a greater responsibility for ourselves, our employees, our investors and other stakeholders that we do it well,” he says. Some of the co-founders possessed previous entrepreneurial experience, for example from the company MetaVisual, founded in 2005. MetaVisual still exists and provides centralized, full-stack online publishing solutions to SMEs, organizations and discerning private customers. “This company has provided us with good practical experience in running a small company. Some of the founders have also worked for some other startup companies for short periods of time,” says Koskela. Nonetheless he says that the learning curve has been very steep over the past two years. “But this has mainly been a positive thing, if you take the right attitude. Of course, a small team is also much more flexible, so implementing a change is much faster (and easier) compared to the university. I also feel very privileged that we have been given a chance to build the company from scratch, including the team, the company culture and the processes. You can experience some of this at the university, but not all of it.” Jukka Kortelainen is still working half-time at the university as an academic research fellow, so he is still involved in research on a daily basis. The co-founders also conduct research at Cerenion,but they are currently commercializing their first product, so research has not been the highest priority, but will have more emphasis in the future, according to Koskela.