With the release of nordicAktiva v2.0, we look back on the journey, and reflect on what this hopefully means for the future.

As a company, we are very proud of our combined hardware and software solution for functional MRI stimulus presentation. It has to be said, though, that the software part had been around in its existing form for quite some years!

As an application scientist at the time) and head of our fMRI Go-To-Market team, I had to step up and add another string to my bow - managing a software development project.

Preparation started in late 2021, with around of internal and external feedback gathering. Although we had a fair idea of the pain points of version 1.3, the process of gathering ideas from staff and various types of customer was quite enlightening! There were many ideas for improvements (and there is still a long list which we've reserved for future changes), and some of the aspects which stood out most have been primary areas of focus for the development.

After mapping out the project and obtaining approval internally, development started in force in April 2022. Unlike previous software projects, we turned to external developers, and thankfully added UI/UX designer into the team to create the "new look". We can't fault the team from iTransition (https://www.itransition.com/) who have been absolutely dedicated and have bent over backwards to help us with everything we have thrown at them. We already look forward to maintaining an ongoing partnership!

Although nordicAktiva is of course useful in both clinical and research settings, we realised that clinical fMRI in particular can pose some major challenges, which can seem daunting to those without a significant amount of experience and technical expertise. One such challenge is the additional equipment needed. Can you be sure the stimuli will be presented successfully? What if something is not communicating? With those issues in mind, a new Hardware Toolbar was designed for nordicAktiva. It helps to align with the hardware components of our system, to provide valuable reassurance to the operator, and to allow quick and easy access to hardware related tools with the click of a button.

Another set of challenges with clinical fMRI comes with paradigm selection and specific paradigm content. A lack of consensus in the clinical fMRI community, paired with a wide variation in the patients coming to the department day-to-day, gave us a strong argument for really supporting the users in modifying the paradigms we provide, or in creating their own. One clear barrier for our existing customers was that the paradigm development process in nordicAktiva v1.3 was pretty unapproachable for most. It was important to enable radiographers, technicians, physicists, radiologists to alter the content of their stimuli without having to call on technical staff with software programming expertise. One of our key new features, the Paradigm Builder, was focused heavily on that aspect.

The period between April 2022 and August 2023 saw a complete re-write, building the software again from the ground up, with various stages of user feedback, testing and improvement. By the end of August we were ready to go forward in our various regulatory approval processes, with our VP Quality stepping in to do a lot of the hard graft.

This journey has seen not only a significant software development, but also many lessons in our own internal product development processes. Keeping up with changing regulations is a challenge in the medical device industry, so we are very thankful for our fantastic Quality department who keep us in line! On a personal note, the lessons learned in software development practices, project management, cybersecurity and regulatory aspects of medical devices have been many, varied, and challenging! Having the support of our sister company, NordicImagingLab, felt like a security blanket. And finally we are able to release this update to the world!

We see this as the start of a longer development process. With a stable, secure and flexible architecture in place, there is great potential to expand the product further to meet more of the needs of our users going forward. The long list of potential further improvements and enhancements will be evaluated and refined with the help of our users, and planning for v2.1 will be underway very shortly!

Why not arrange a demo with one of our team of application scientists? Send us an e-mail to applicationsupport@nordicneurolab.com and we'd be glad to help.