Jeffrey Owen received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from The University of Arizona, emphasizing auditory neurophysiology. Following graduation, Dr. Owen took a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at The University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC). At KUMC, Dr. Owen ran the evoked potential laboratory and developed the intraoperative monitoring (IOM) program for Neurosurgery and Orthopedic Surgery.

After spending four years at KUMC, Dr. Owen took a position as an Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Working with Dr. Keith Bridwell, an Orthopedic Spine surgeon, they developed many of the techniques currently used in IOM. Dr. Owen stayed at Washington University for seven years and then took a position as an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins Medical Institution (JHMI) in Baltimore. Dr. Owen developed and ran the IOM program at JHMI for four years when he resigned and started Surgical Monitoring Services, Inc.

While in academia, Dr. Owen conducted numerous studies that developed many of the monitoring procedures still performed today. These studies lead to over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, hundreds of presentations, and multiple awards from the various spine societies. Dr. Owen is a Fellow of the Scoliosis Research Society and the North American Spine Society. He was also one of the founding members of the American Society for Neurophysiological Monitoring, a 2-year President of that Society, and a Fellow in that Society.

In 1997 Dr. Owen started Surgical Monitoring Services, Inc. This was one of the first private companies to provide IOM at hospitals and universities in the U.S. Doing business as Sentient Medical Systems (SMS), the company provided IOM and TCD diagnostic services at over 600 hospitals annually. When sold in 2007, SMS was one of the largest private monitoring companies in the United States, monitoring more than 15,000 high-risk surgeries annually with gross annual revenues of over $45M.

In 2019, Dr. Arthur Burnett, a Urological Surgeon at Johns Hopkins, contacted Dr. Owen. They had worked together at Johns Hopkins on developing an IOM procedure for use during surgery for prostate cancer (Radical Prostatectomy [RP]). Based on that conversation, Dr. Owen started Neurovascular Research and Design to develop an IOM procedure for use during RP that would improve surgical outcomes. Using results from two previous pilot studies, appropriate methods and procedures were identified and developed, which have led to the development of the SENTINEL monitoring platform.