ForSight Robotic has just completed their second major funding round. The Series A was led by The Adani Group alongside existing investors Eclipse Ventures and Mithril Capital. The round also saw participation from several new investors, including Provenio Capital, Precision Capital, Reiya Ventures, and the Ljungstrom family office.
Changing how we see
Globally, about 2.2 billion people have vision impairment and there are hundreds of millions of people who suffer from cataracts specifically. In the United States, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, there are over 25 million Americans who suffer from cataracts alone. The Global Public Health Journal confirmed that this burden is estimated to cost $3 trillion a year. And so, to not only help people with their health but also prevent unwanted spending, early medical attention for these impairments is needed. More specifically, to prevent the leading causes of blindness in those suffering from cataracts, timely ophthalmic microsurgery is required, however, there is a shortage of skilled ophthalmic surgeons to do so, as it is a surgery that is intricate, complex, and requires years to master. According to the British Journal of Ophthalmology, affluent nations have 72 eye surgeons per million people, while low-income countries have an average of only 3.7 surgeons per million. In a conversation with Geektime, Dr. Joseph Nathan, co-founder and Chief Business Officer of ForSight Robotics stated that the lack of available, skilled doctors and accessibility to necessary care has led to subpar outcomes for patients. He and his co-founders wanted to change that, and so they founded ForSight Robotics.
The team at ForSight Robotics understands that state-of-the-art robotics can make huge strides in the field of ophthalmology. Nathan continued by saying, “With the advancement of computing power, AI, and miniature mechanics, better access to healthcare will be made possible. Our goal is to work with industries across different geographies in order to benefit as many vision-impaired patients as possible.” ForSight Robotics’ procedure, dubbed ORYOM, meaning daylight in Hebrew, leverages cutting-edge technologies in microsurgical robotics, computer visualization, and machine learning. The intuitive platform automates the complex subtleties of ophthalmic surgery to treat the diseases underlying preventable blindness. Their platform is 10 times more accurate than the human hand – delivering ultimate consistency, for extremely safe surgeries with optimal refractive outcomes and has thereby raised the bar for such procedures, especially in a time of staffing shortages.
The Series A comes a year after ForSight Robotics' seed round, which amounted to $10 million. Since then, the company has doubled in size and has also advanced the product's technological capabilities. With the new funding, they hope to push the ORYOM platform for further development for clinical trials. Moreover, as the company is working on procedures for other preventable ophthalmic diseases that can benefit from the accuracy of a robotics platform and advanced visualization, such as retinal diseases and glaucoma, they hope to accelerate these platforms too. With a strategic board of the best medical robot experts and world-leading ophthalmic surgeons, coupled with the support from investors, ForSight Robotics will bridge the gap in the accessibility to ophthalmic surgery, one eye at a time.
ForSight Robotics was founded by Dr. Daniel Glozman (CEO), Dr. Joseph Nathan (CBO) and Prof. Moshe Shoham (CSO). They are located in Haifa, Israel and employ 30 people. To date, they have raised $67 million from both investments and grants.
