The history of HEINE

Helmut A. Heine, physicist and passionate engineer, founded HEINE over 75 years ago. His four founding principles still guide the HEINE team today:

First: do something meaningful and make an important contribution to society.

Second: always develop and manufacture the best product.

Third: produce relevant components yourself to ensure the best quality and drive innovation.

And fourth: stay independent to always be able to make the right long-term decisions for the benefit of patients, end-user customers and employees.

HEINE & Co. Medizinisch-Physikalische Werkstätten GmbH is officially incorporated in the town of Herrsching, Germany. Production of otoscopes and direct ophthalmoscopes based on the May design is already underway. To support the young company with additional work in the early years, however, HEINE also manufactures products for other companies, such as trial frames for Rodenstock.

With Germany in the grips of reconstruction and post-war turmoil, many resources and raw materials are simply impossible to come by. So, in his search for raw materials in order to manufacture his company’s first diagnostic instruments, Helmut A. Heine uses what he can find during this time: empty bullet casings. An early form of recycling is born.

The bifocal illumination system makes two sharp aperture images possible: either on the fundus (i.e. the back of the eye) or on the front section of the patient’s eye. For many examinations, this is a great benefit, such as in cases of corneal injury, dry eyes or diseases of the eyelids.

We prefer to make bulbs ourselves so they meet our quality standards. If you’ve been following this timeline from the start, you’ll know why – it’s all about our principles. And if someone else can do a better job than we can, we’ll pay to have their knowledge and expertise. ZORN manufactures miniature precision bulbs and LED bulbs for HEINE’s high-quality diagnostic instruments as well as for manufacturers of devices used for spectral analysis in medicine and technology.

There aren’t very many instruments at this time that actively help during an examination. The automatic focus of the Autofoc 2 Ophthalmoscope helps the practitioner tremendously during the fundus examination, leading to a faster and more precise diagnosis.

The HEINE Canada subsidiary is founded in Kitchener on 23 November 1982. The company has thus leapt across the pond to land on the North American continent.

HEINE founds a subsidiary in Australia by purchasing Caminer Brothers, a company which has already been importing HEINE instruments for years. The company is renamed HEINE AUSTRALIA PTY. LIMITED in 1991.

In Switzerland, a country best known for its precise wristwatches, they know how to appreciate precision in medical devices as well – which is why HEINE founds a subsidiary in Neuhausen am Rheinfall.

The electroplating department takes what is considered a huge step forward for the time and becomes one of the most state-of-the-art facilities in Europe. While having an in-house electroplating system does come with extremely high investment costs and a high workload, it also means being able to take full control of the process and define our own quality standards in the finishing of our products.

We have the expertise required to create especially sturdy and durable chrome-plated surfaces that cannot be purchased as such on the market.

Today our electroplating system processes more than 10,000 individual parts a day.

In 1989 our company founder goes to the dermatologist with his wife.

They both reckon that a birthmark looks peculiar. The dermatologist takes a quick glance at it and says, ‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’ Helmut A. Heine is stunned. How can the doctor come to that conclusion without a precise examination? The accuracy of a diagnosis made based on an assessment according to the ABCDE rule is around 55 %.

That isn’t enough for Helmut A. Heine. Through working together with the University of Munich’s Dermatology Clinic, he finds out that much more information is stored in the structures under the epidermis (skin) which would allow for a far more reliable diagnosis.

HEINE invented the first dermatoscope in the world in collaboration with the University of Munich’s Dermatology Clinic, Professor Dr Otto Braun-Falco and Professor Dr Wilhelm Stolz. The HEINE DELTA 10 increases the accuracy of diagnosis to 90 %. And we continue our research to ensure that as the inventors of dermatoscopy, we are still leaders in this field today.

The LAMBDA 100 Retinometer is the first compact instrument for determining a patient’s expected visual acuity after surgery in cases of cataracts or other opacities.

It can be used to give the patient a very precise prediction of the expected result of surgery without raising false hopes. This helps build trust between the practitioner and the patient.

Oliver Heine joins the management team in Germany and takes on the responsibility for sales, marketing and the subsidiaries of HEINE (Schweiz) AG, HEINE USA LTD., HEINE INSTRUMENTS CANADA LIMITED, HEINE AUSTRALIA PTY. LIMITED, HEINE Scandinavia, Cornelius Glas GmbH and ZORN GmbH & Co. KG. He takes over the entire operational business of the HEINE Group in 2006 and assumes the total strategic and operational responsibilities in 2015.

The third generation of the Heine family still follows the same principles of the founder. Essential for the new era are investments in the development of new technologies and innovative products, the introduction of lean and efficient production processes and further investments in vertical integration and new manufacturing technologies.

HEINE instruments set the standard worldwide. Some competitors take this a little too literally and try to manufacture copies of our products. The example shown here is our mini 3000 Otoscope.

Due to the conical shape of the handle, it has already become impossible to reproduce it externally. But the inside, where it’s all about lenses, precision, light or thermal management, that’s what makes our experts gasp in shock and horror. We’ve seen it all, from unclear, tiny fields of view, incorrect colours and ridiculous designs to instruments that are actually dangerous.

We don’t always take legal action when we spot a fake – but we absolutely will if the well-being of patients and practitioners is put at risk or our patents are infringed.

Multiple users can easily capture images in their normal workflow with multiple mobile HEINE devices. Images are instantaneously transferred wirelessly to the Cube where they can be accessed, analysed, compared and administered through a simple web-browser interface from any laptop, PC or tablet. Easy. Efficient. Secure. The HEINE Cube.

This mobile masterpiece is taking medical professionals by storm. The crystal clear image was accomplished using the achromatic HEINE optical system. Additionally, it delivers extraordinary colour rendering, due to the quality of our LED^HQ, plus the polarisation eliminates reflections and provides glare-free working conditions. The DELTAone is a tool dermatologists gladly carry around in their pocket.

See things you’ve never seen before: this high-end dermatoscope provides the best imaging we’ve ever developed. And all that when its true field of view measures 30 millimetres. On top of that, it provides unmatched colour rendering, in LED^HQ, of course. Polarisation eliminates reflections and ensures glare-free working conditions.

The new OMEGA 600 – the world’s lightest high-end indirect ophthalmoscope – provides the best stereoscopic images. It allows examination into the far periphery of the fundus, and now even delivers up to 20% better view of the retina in patients with media opacities – thanks to yet another world exclusive: visionBOOST. In our humble opinion, we’re a hard act to follow.

If something on our instruments can be improved, then we will improve it no matter what. It is with this meticulous attention to detail and drive for perfection and top quality that we manufacture our products.

That’s why we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk: we live and breathe quality. In everything we do. Every product we make. Every lens we polish. Every screw we tighten. Every optic fibre we bundle. Always. Every day.

It’s how we ensure that our high-end products meet our claim of providing the most accurate and earliest possible diagnosis. No more, no less.