We recently had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Christoph Guger, Founder and CEO of g.tec medical engineering GmbH, a leading company in brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and biosignal processing. Being in this field for over 25 years now, Dr. Christoph is on a mission to craft high-end BCI tools that can efficiently record brain activities.
With valuable contributions to several patents and publications, Dr. Christoph Guger chairs the BCI Award Foundation, well-known for recognizing outstanding achievements in this field. In this insightful session, the CEO shares with us about his professional journey and offers us a glimpse of his company and its services, along with his visions for this respective field.
The Advent Of Christoph’s Journey
We started the interview by asking, “Can you tell us about your professional journey and what led you to your current role?”
Christoph shared, “When I studied at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, my supervisor told me about a professor in Austria who developed brain-computer interfaces (BCI). This professor, Gert Pfurtscheller, was a biomedical engineering teacher at my home university in Graz and of course, I did not know him.
You have to go far away to understand what is cool at home. When I returned from the USA I went into his lab and asked if I could do my master thesis with him. Later, I started my PhD in his lab and built the first real-time BCI system in 1999. During my PhD people asked me if I could sell the system to them. So, I started g.tec medical engineering a day after my Ph.D. was finished and sold the first system to Oxford University. The second system was sold to ETRI, a large research institution in South Korea. Now, we have been selling and designing BCI systems for almost 25 years.”
Breakthrough Products – Setting g.tec Apart
We were intrigued to learn how Christoph Guger marked a unique approach in his business. So, we inquired, “What sets your business apart from competitors in the industry?”
Christoph shared, “g.tec is developing, producing, and selling brain-computer interface and neurotechnology all in-house in Austria. This means we have all process steps under control and can react very quickly to technology trends. We have implemented all existing BCI principles, and algorithms into our hardware and software platform so that users can quickly use the technology for their own neuroscience and neurotechnology experiments. We sell our platform to many Universities like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and of course, Johns Hopkins and have expanded to 100 countries around the world.
Besides that, the systems are used for technology developments by major industrial players like BMW, Airbus, Meta, Apple, Amazon, and many more. About 10 years ago we started with the development of medical products that we sell to hospitals and rehabilitation clinics.
We established a franchise system that allows businessmen and therapists to use neurotechnology in their centers to treat patients. With our recoveriX system for the neurorehabilitation of stroke patients and patients with Multiple Sclerosis, we are already in many countries, and up to about 50,000 treatments were done.”
Worth-Sharing Achievements
To learn more about the notable achievements of Christoph Guger’s innovative business, we inquired, “What has been your business’s biggest achievement to date?”
He shared, “The biggest achievement is that g.tec is used in more than 100 countries for BCI and neurotechnology research projects. This is only possible if the systems are well-designed and are bringing a clear benefit to the customer. When we started in 1999 there were just a few people active in the BCI field and g.tec was pushing the topic for 25 years by visiting many clients in their lab to run BCI workshops.
Back then, many people had no idea about BCIs and did not know how to handle them. We did hundreds of these workshops, showed them at conferences, and published many papers to show where the technology can be used. Nowadays, it is a billion-dollar business, and even Elon Musk is investing in the field. Publications showed as well that g.tec is leading the field with 54 different applications that were developed with g.tec technology. This is much more than with any other BCI product on the market.”
Taking The Leap
We further asked, “How would you describe your leadership style?”
He continued, “All people at g.tec have a University degree and work on cutting-edge neurotechnology. Our g.tec employees are embedded in a professional environment with people designing BCI technology for many years and our employees stay for many years with the company. This is essential to develop essential knowledge and to boot up new members quickly.
By doing everything in-house from electrical circuit design, and programming to running experiments and medical approval we can react quickly to market trends and bring trends into the field. In the year 2000, we put e.g. an algorithm called Common Spatial Patterns into the BCI field, and now two decades later, the field is still using this algorithm to run BCI experiments. Another important step was that we brought the first dry EEG electrode to the market, which allows the registration of EEG without electrode gel and this makes it easier for users to apply EEG electrodes.”
Retaining Top Talents
Having the best talent in the team is paramount for the success of a business. So, we asked, “What strategies do you use to motivate and develop talent in your organization?”
Christoph responded, “At the beginning of g.tec I was still heavily involved in programming and designing BCI systems. A good day was with 16 hours of programming. This is not possible anymore because we have grown a bit and every single product requires a couple of experts to develop it. We have quite a few PhD students that start with new research and often this becomes a new company field. Then these students finish the PhD and are supposed to take over a company department and lead the corresponding team.
That is the reason why we have e.g. a neurorehabilitation team, an invasive BCI team, a consumer BCI team, and a signal processing team. These teams are experts in their specific field and it is really difficult for anybody to compete with them.”
Impact Of AI
With vast digital transformation, industries are facing significant changes as well. So we asked, “What role do you see Artificial Intelligence or technology playing in this industry?”
He replied, “We have been using AI technology for many years because otherwise, it is not possible to extract information from the brain. You need sophisticated algorithms to analyze the data. By using our BCI systems on many different patients we can acquire more and more signals from the brain and this allows deep learning technology to extract even more.”
Envisioning The Future
To understand more about the perspectives of Christoph Guger on the future of BCI systems, we asked, “How do you envision the future of your industry?”
“BCI systems will be used more and more for new applications in the coming years. This ranges from neurorehabilitation with stroke patients and others, to the assessment of command following in patients with disorders of consciousness to guidance in neurosurgery with high-gamma mapping systems.
Besides that, BCI systems will come to the consumer market. g.tec developed e.g. a puzzle game where you can solve puzzles with the BCI control or platformer computer games where the BCI system is used as a weapon to destroy obstacles.” He replied.
Overcoming Major Adversities
While challenging phases are an inevitable part, overcoming these events efficiently counts the most. We asked, “What have been some of the most significant hurdles you’ve encountered in your business, and how did you address them?”
Christoph shared, “Medical certification in all countries of the world is a hurdle and it is becoming more and more expensive and time-consuming every year. We developed our medical certification unit to deal with these problems.”
Fostering A Healthy Workspace
Addressing the aspect of a healthy and positive workspace, we asked, “What strategies do you use to motivate and develop talent in your organization?”
“People can choose from different product lines and company departments. The topic of neurotechnology is just very attractive and therefore it is easy for us to find employees in all different sectors.” He added.
A Worth-Sharing Piece Of Mind
We were curious to learn more about a business suggestion that has stayed with Christoph Guger over the years. So, we asked, “What is an excellent piece of business advice you have ever received?”
He replied, “The best advice is – Just do it yourself and don’t wait for others to do it or help you.”
Ensuring Sustainable Success
We ended the session by asking, “How do you balance investing in up-to-date ideas with ensuring ongoing operations remain successful?”
Christoph concluded, “g.tec has different teams with different responsibilities and this makes sure that everything gets a correct priority. We have companies in different countries like Austria, Spain, Hong Kong, Columbia, USA, so that the team can focus on specific tasks.”
Follow Christoph Guger on LinkedIn.
Find g.tec Medical Engineering GmbH on LinkedIn and visit their website http://www.gtec.at
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