They touch the heart

The German-American story of the entrepreneurial Osypka family

The entrance to the fancy headquarters of Osypka Medical does not only open the door to a company with worldwide success. Those who enter dive into the German-American story of the entrepreneurial Osypka family in which the human heart plays a pivotal role.

In 1963, Peter Osypka made his dream come true. Together with his wife and son Markus, who was only three months old then, he packed his bags and left Germany for the U.S. However, he is not escaping this time. A few years before, he fled East Germany because, as a practicing catholic, he was denied entry to university. He now sets off to study. He had actually only just received a PhD in Braunschweig. But the electrical engineer had chosen a field of study that had advanced much further in the US, namely, medical technology. He is intrigued by electric currents in the human heart – and by methods that electrically stimulate diseased hearts.

Half a century later, his son Markus had received a PhD in electrical engineering and had since become the director of Osypka Medical GmbH in Berlin Adlershof and Osypka Medical Inc. in San Diego. His company develops and produces external pacemakers and innovative measuring systems for measuring the human blood circulation with great precision. This technology allows physicians to track pressure, flow velocity, blood volume per beat and half a dozen other parametres on a screen without surgery. High technology that produces 2,500 measurements a second which are translated by software into easily readable numbers and diagrams.

Markus Osypka has two sisters and a brother. They are also following in the footsteps of their father’s career. But, first things first. In the U.S., young Peter Osypka found everything he needed. As a postdoc researcher for Professor Earl Wood, he learned all there is to know about human blood circulation and technological ways to stimulate them. He had a job and was able to get by with his family which by that time already had four members. However, his wife was homesick. Osypka weighed his options and agreed to return to Germany.

Back home, he is hired by Hoffmann La Roche to establish a department for medical technology. But, after four years, the company pulls the plug. This is the starting point for Osypka’s life as an entrepreneur. Using the expertise he acquired, he builds up an international company in the 1970s and, in 1982, founds OSCOR Medical Corp. in Florida. As of 1984, he maintains a department for development in Berlin. Soon he has hundreds of employees and is active all over the world.

The foundation of his success is an unbreakable pacemaker electrode. He fails to ensure patent protection and the money is earned by others. The restless inventor learns his lesson. Today, he has more than 300 patents. Moreover, he realises that his innovative inventions are pathbreaking. He gains customers all over the world.

“Surely, our father was a role model for us,” says Markus Osypka. Like his three siblings, he has to lend a hand in the company as a child every Saturday. As a teenager, he accompanies his father to international trade fairs. Soon he manages products and goes on business trips to Spain, France, Turkey - and on many visits to the United States where he still lives most of the time. His brother Thomas manages OSCOR, an even larger company. Sister Nicola, the only sibling who studied biology instead of engineering, is head of Osypka AG.

The siblings grew into entrepreneurship. “Our father has demonstrated that every problem also offers opportunities and that it is important to solve problems locally with the customers,” Markus says. And he exemplified through his own life that it is wise to maintain a good relationship with employees and sales partners.It is for this reason that Markus Osypka is back in Adlershof. He is preparing the annual meeting of the marketing, engineering and worldwide sales departments. “We need this exchange to learn from one another about what our customers require in the various regions, what our engineers are able to implement, and which innovations we are currently working on, he says.

As an organization that is scattered over the globe, it is equally important to regularly come together and develop a sense of home. Markus Osypka knows best. From the beginning, his home was the family company operating worldwide.

By Peter Trechow for Adlershof Special