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Optain Health, a healthcare technology company specializing in retinal imaging and teleophthalmology, announced an overscribed $26 million Series A funding raise led by Insight Partners.
WHAT IT DOES
Optain's portable robotic camera captures retinal images that help detect early-stage eye diseases, including diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration. It can also assess cardiovascular disease risk.
The company will use the funds for the global launch of its advanced robotic retinal imaging, AI and teleophthalmology platform.
"Our mission is simple: faster, easier, more equitable disease screening," Jeff Dunkel, CEO of Optain, said in a statement.
"After two years of major international growth, we are ready to scale in the U.S. This Series A funds our enterprise deployments, opens new markets and pushes the frontier of what the retina can reveal."
MARKET SNAPSHOT
In 2023, Aegis Ventures and Northwell Holdings launched Optain Health with an initial seed investment of $12 million.
Optain was the first company that Aegis and Northwell launched through Ascertain, their AI company creation partnership.
Other companies in the retinal imaging space include the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Victoria, Australia, which in February led an eye study that used AI to analyze eye images of over 50,000 people to better understand the retina's connection with various diseases.
The international study, funded by California-based Lowy Medical Research Institute, tapped into a dataset of optical coherence tomography images from around 54,000 individuals stored at the UK Biobank.
Utilizing a convolutional neural network, it generated "the highest-resolution spatial dataset of retinal thickness ever produced," creating 50,000 maps with measurements at over 29,000 locations across the retina.
In January, AI Optics received FDA 510(k) clearance for its Sentinel Camera. The handheld retinal imaging system captures high-quality images of the human eye, helping to address gaps in retinal disease screening through a portable and accessible tool.
The Sentinel Camera aims to enable point-of-care retinal imaging that would eliminate the need for some patients to visit an eye specialist's office.
In 2022, Remidio Innovative Solutions reported positive results from separate clinical trials of its AI solution in detecting referable glaucoma.
Remidio offers an integrated screening solution for referable glaucoma, a stage wherein the disease can still be better managed through treatment.
It consists of a retinal imaging device and an AI algorithm for offline inferencing. The Medios Referable Glaucoma AI detects structural changes in the optic nerve head and surrounding retinal nerve fibre layer.
