Remember when you were young and your parents would tell you that staring at the TV screen for too long would cause problems with your eyesight? Well, Israeli startup NovaSight apparently never got the memo, as it aims to use tablets to treat children who suffer from Amblyopia or lazy eye disorder which affects 3% of the population.
The Israeli MedTech startup announced an $8 million Series A funding round led by Rimonci Capital, which brings the company into the $16 million range in total funding up-to-date. NovaSight intends to utilize the newly acquired funds for extensive research that would help accelerate its request for FDA approval.
A diagnostic tool that kids would actually want to use
NovaSight, which was founded in 2016 by CTO Dan Oz, CEO Ran Yam and Prof. Michael Belkin, has 2 products on the market based on the same eye-tracking core technology that tracks a patient’s eye movement 90 times a second. The treatment although designed for children is adaptable for adults as well. The company’s first product, EyeSwift, which is a diagnostic tool for eye doctors that utilizes active glasses that enable a quick visual assessment. The glasses allow the doctor to darken each eye while the child watches a short animation, significantly reducing the eye test time. Once the EyeSwift collects the data, it is then analyzed in the cloud, providing immediate diagnostic results for different visual impairments and can even offer insight on reading capabilities, color blindness, ADHD, and more.
If the kid suffers from lazy eye disorder, a common treatment usually involves some kind of eyepatch or cover over the strong eye for long periods during the day in an effort to force the brain to use the lazy eye. This is usually less effective as most kids find the patch uncomfortable over time. NovaSight’s second product is the CureSight, which is a binocular tool to help children better develop visual acuity and stereoscopic vision, rather than using the archaic and oftentimes uncomfortable patch solution. By combining the specialized glasses with the tablet, both can monitor rapid eye movement and blur the momentary gaze position of the stronger eye, which encourages the brain to put more effort into analyzing vision from the lazy eye. The machine learns and analyzes the data in order to better adjust treatment, allowing the doctor and parents to easily remotely follow up on the kid’s progression.
The whole treatment occurs while the child watches their content of choice including movies, TV show or social media, which in the end means better compliance from the little tyke. Essentially, turning cartoons into a medical treatment.
