UK MedTech start-up Occuity has sealed £2.85million investment to develop revolutionary medical technology with multiple clinical uses that includes diabetes scanning.
Background
Berkshire (UK) based Occuity has received investment funding to forge ahead with its development of a non-contact, optical glucose meter. Occuity Indigo is intended to allow the 4.7million people in the UK with diabetes to monitor their blood-sugar levels through a simple scan of the eye.
Occuity, the medical technology start-up, which is developing the Indigo, has raised the largest MedTech financing deal (£2.85m) on leading crowdfunding platform, Seedrs. The original £1.8m target was reached within 24 hours of launch. The team, comprised of experts in optics, mechanical engineering, and industrial design, are also collaborating with the medical and academic world including partnerships with the Royal Berkshire Hospital and the University of Bristol.
The deal is ground-breaking for people with diabetes but caught the attention of investors because of the broad potential usage of the company’s patented optical technology for a range of conditions including glaucoma, myopia, diabetes management, pre-diabetes screening and eventually, it is hoped, the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease.
The technology uses Diabetes Screening Optical confocal scanning technology to allows very precise measurements of structures within the eye, down to micron level. The technology will detect the concentration of Advanced Glycation End-Products (AGEs) which build up in the eye over time. Invisible ‘Blue’ light illuminates the eye and the returning scattered blue light alongside green fluorescent light from the AGEs is detected. Coupled with machine learning techniques, the readings from this device will give an indication of whether the subject is non-diabetic, pre-diabetic or diabetic. Taking just a few seconds, the test is completely non-contacting, so can be performed in a non-clinical setting in a pharmacy, an optician’s practice, or even in a domiciliary setting such as a care home.
Company comments
Occuity CEO and Co-founder Dr. Dan Daly states: “We’re delighted to have become the largest ever MedTech raise on Seedrs with over 850 investors from 37 countries, sharing our vision. Diabetes is a growing, global problem and we believe our technology will enable health services throughout the world to monitor and screen for the disease. (The aim is to improve) the clinical outcomes for the hundreds of millions of people who are unaware they have pre-diabetes or diabetes. The Occuity Indigo will then make regular glucose testing easier, faster and pain-free, improving the daily lives of many millions more people worldwide.”
Design Director, Daniele De Iuliis, who – having spent 27 years as part of Apple’s Industrial Design Group – is now leading on the design of the Occuity Indigo, comments: “For too long now, the way in which we discover and monitor chronic diseases like diabetes has been routed in repetitive finger stick blood testing with all the pain, discomfort and inconvenience that brings. In contrast, the Occuity Indigo will be a discrete handheld product that will simply scan the eye to take a glucose measurement providing a pain-free 21st century solution that is long overdue.”
Source: Occuity
published: October 18, 2021 in: Diagnostics, News, Technology