By Avigayil Kadesh
Alpha Omega isn’t just another Israeli high-tech company. In addition to successfully cornering the market on products for neurosurgery and neuroscience research and being named the 2012 American Israeli Company of the Year by the American Israeli Chamber of Commerce in Atlanta, Georgia, Alpha Omega is also a success story – and a love story – involving its Arab-Israeli co-owners, Imad and Reem Younis.
They met while students at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, he in electrical engineering and she in civil engineering. In 1993, the newlyweds decided to take the bold move of going back to their mutual hometown of Nazareth, a largely Christian Arab city, to launch a business making neurological recording and stimulation tools.
“We didn’t have money, so we sold our car -- and that’s the way we started,” says Reem Younis.
The company’s products have been well received by brain surgeons and researchers needing great accuracy and stability. “We are in more than 120 hospitals and more than 500 labs on six continents,” she says proudly.
Safe ‘driving’ inside brain
“Alpha Omega’s knowhow is about ‘driving’ safely inside the brain with an electrode, recording neural activity, stimulating neural tissue, processing and analyzing the data,” explains Younis.
“In simple terms, you can look at it as a GPS inside the brain that guides the neurosurgeon to the required location, where a permanent electrode is implanted. This treatment is supposed to eliminate disease symptoms, and the patient can go back to his or her normal life.”
Because the United States is its major target market, Alpha Omega maintains a sales and service office in Georgia. The instruments, manufactured in Nazareth, are also sold through offices in Israel and Germany, as well as by sales representatives in China, Japan and South America.
The ongoing research behind the expanding and constantly updated product line takes place in Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Medical Center and in other Israeli research labs.
Encouraging other Arab innovators
Brain researchers use Alpha Omega tools in lab experiments and to analyze results, while neurosurgeons use them to treat patients with conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and dystonia, a nervous system disorder that causes involuntary muscle contractions and spasms. “In Europe, this method is also used to treat depression,” says Younis.
The products are all approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and also have the European CE Mark.
“Because Alpha Omega is involved in both the medical and research fields, we hear about new needs and trends,” says Younis. “We know where the market is leading in five or 10 years, so that our excellent teams will develop the appropriate systems for serving humanity and fulfilling the company’s mission.”
The 35 staff members in Alpha Omega’s Nazareth headquarters are graduates of the Technion or Tel Aviv University, and belong to all denominations: Christian, Muslim and Jewish.
During the November 2012 Global Entrepreneurship Week, the couple visited Arab high schools to show their company’s technology and entrepreneurship model. “We invited 12th-graders to explain their own innovations to encourage our new generation to take the lead,” says Younis.
“We are 20 percent of the [Israeli] population and also need to be 20% of the Israeli high-tech scene, but we are not,” she says. “It’s closer to 1%. Alpha Omega is about bringing high-tech to Nazareth and giving employment to very highly qualified engineers.”