Denso : Beyond Next Ventures and DENSO Establish a New Company “OPExPARK” for Medical IoT

Beyond Next Ventures Inc.
DENSO Corporation

Beyond Next Ventures Inc. and DENSO Corporation today announced that they have established OPExPARK Inc., a carve-out^*1 to develop the businesses utilizing OPeLiNK®^*2. OPExPARK will develop and sell systems that integrate information from surgery equipment, produce educational content for physicians, and offer distribution services.

Beyond Next Ventures, which provides incubation funding for technology startups mainly in life sciences, develops commercialization acceleration program called BRAVE. This is a commercialization support program for several months focusing on technology seeds at universities and other organizations. It prepares business strategies and business plans in the initial phase and offers opportunities to strengthen the management team and tap financial resources and networks. OPExPARK is a carve-out from the first company that utilized this program.

With support from AMED^*3 and in cooperation with five universities and 11 companies, DENSO developed OPeLiNK®, an information platform for distributing data gathered from surgical equipment. In function, OPeLiNK® uses visualizations of the data taken from the equipment to share information that was previously difficult to track and communicate widely among medical teams. OPeLiNK® has been installed at Hiroshima University Hospital, Shinshu University Hospital, and Tokyo Women's Medical University Hospital.

The new company will develop and sell systems that integrate information from surgery equipment by utilizing OPeLiNK®, produce educational content for learning about the latest surgery at any time and anywhere based on the data extracted from the systems, and offer services and educational content for physicians around the world. The business will start in October.

^*1 Carve-out
A carve-out is a venture company established by carving out part of a business to utilize managerial resources such as funding and human resources from external partners to accelerate growth.

^*2 OPeLiNK® information platform
OPeLiNK® is an information platform that constantly provides data gathered from each equipment in the operating theater, which is conventionally handled individually, with data in a consistent format so that it can be used by any device. All equipment information and biometric information accumulated in OPeLiNK® is extracted, processed, and distributed to visualize the surgeon's judgment. This makes it possible to share complex tacit knowledge that can be acquired only in an operating theater, with physicians around the world. OpeLiNK® is a trademark of OPExPARK.

^*3 AMED
Abbreviation for the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development.