Stratos Celebrates 20 Years of Innovation
Products developed during the firm's first 20 years touch the lives of most Americans as the company evolves to stay ahead of emerging technologies.
Seattle (PRWEB) October 10, 2007
Most people have probably never heard of Stratos, but there is a very good chance their lives have been touched by one of the hundreds of new products it has developed. The Seattle-based company celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, which may be a significant achievement for most businesses, but pales in comparison to the long list of product and technology innovations it achieved in its first two decades of business.
"We began like most small businesses, with a vision, enthusiasm and youthful naïveté," says Stratos Founder and CEO Allan Stephan. "Over the years we evolved as we came to understand the needs of major corporations and venture backed companies in life science, consumer electronic and software products. We added skills, but more importantly, we created two organizations with separate strategies to assist company growth: Stratos Product Development LLC., for their immediate development needs, and Stratos Group LLC., for the longer range mission of identifying and cultivating emerging technologies and companies for corporate acquisition."
"Our staff of scientists, engineers, designers and program managers create efficiencies and relationships that accelerate our client's time-to-market," said Sean MacLeod, president of Stratos Product Development. "For 20 years now, many of the world's most successful technology organizations have turned to Stratos for their hardware and software solutions. For a service organization, long term business relationships that create significant growth for our clients is a true measure of success."
Some of the more recognizable consumer products developed by Stratos Product Development are the first laptop computer touchpad (an input device on which a user moves their finger to move the cursor and common for most laptops today) for Apple's PowerBook line, the game controllers for the first generation Microsoft X-Box gaming system and the first internet connected biometric device (a wireless sports pedometer to monitor exercise performance) for a start-up called Sportbrain.
For the past 10 years, healthcare and life science corporations have relied on Stratos Product Development's expertise converting biology, biochemistry and physiology to the digital domain for software analysis or therapeutic treatment. Stratos has several in-vitro diagnostic, molecular analytic instrumentation, and minimally invasive medical device efforts currently under development. The company was also recently engaged to help a leading medical device manufacturer develop a new category of patient worn, wireless devices for vital sign monitoring for the hospital environment.
The Stratos Group looks to the future with a focus on understanding unsolved or predicted problems facing mankind, and creating solutions through the application of emerging technologies or the innovative combination of existing technologies. "Typically, we identify or have intellectual property or emerging technology brought to our attention through our academic and corporate relationships. This permits us to address market opportunities that are beyond the product horizon of major corporations," says Stratos Group CEO, Allan Stephan. "Our goal is to bridge the gap between early fundamental research and its development into a commercially viable format."
To date, Stratos Group has founded, co-founded or incubated nine Puget Sound-based companies including Amnis, a biological imaging instrumentation company, and Therus, a therapeutic ultrasound medical device company. Stratos Group has also partnered with Micronics, a micro-fluidics and molecular detection technology leader, since 2002 to address the critical need for lowering the cost of disease detection.
The Stratos Group has intensified its focus on solutions for personalized medicine to address the crisis of rising healthcare cost. A new spin-off, Stratos Biosystems LLC, is developing an affinity biochip for the capture and detection of disease indicating proteins (biomarkers) from blood or saliva far in advance of noticeable symptoms, which could enable early cancer detection, faster pharmaceutical development and lower cost medicine. Other Stratos' teams are working on extremely low cost DNA sequencing, which would help determine the best course of treatment or drug for an individual, and the development of a wearable consumer device for the non-drug treatment of chronic and acute pain. Financially, the Stratos Group partners with capital sources interested in advancing solution to problems facing healthcare and the environment.
"Much of our success is driven by the incredible passion our employees bring to work every day," says Mike Nelson, co-founder and vice president of industrial design. "Starting with a blank sheet and ending up with a product that is useful, functional and desirable is as much a thrill today as it was when we founded the company."
A complete list of Stratos' innovations can be found online at: http://www. stratos. com/HTML/about/list. shtml (http://www. stratos. com/HTML/about/list. shtml)
About Stratos Product Development, LLC:
Stratos Product Development is a world-class company of experts in all of the disciplines required for commercializing technology and bringing products rapidly to market. We offer comprehensive systems solutions as well as individualized services ranging from product strategy, research and design to engineering and agency compliance. We excel in the areas of medical devices, software products, life sciences, high performance computing, consumer electronics and industrial instrumentation applications. Clients benefit from our extensive background in each of these areas as well as the convergence of skill sets that fosters creativity, reduces time-to-market and offers the most compelling solution to the marketplace. Visit us online at www. stratos. com.
About Stratos Group LLC:
Stratos Group is dedicated to the conversion of science and technology into commercial products for the advancement of mankind and the protection of the environment. Visit us online at www. stratos. com
About Stratos Biosystems LLC:
Stratos Biosystems' EC-Affinity(TM) Biochips for MALDI mass spectrometry are based on the company's patent-pending, self-assembling surface chemistries, and represent a new generation of capacity and functionality for researchers who are in the race to find disease-indicating proteins or learn the impact that drugs, chemicals or pollutants have on cellular protein production. Visit us online at www. stratosbiosystems. com.
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