Smartscope-X project aims to develop, validate and commercialize revolutionary solution for screening of diabetic retinopathy and other blinding eye diseases. Solution combines a new low cost and customized hand held fundus camera connected with AI for automated diagnosis.
Almost 500 million people live with Diabetes. And diabetic retinopathy is one of the leading causes, and the fastest growing reason, of blindness. About 35% of all diabetics will at some point of their lives suffer vision loss because of this disease. However, progression of disease (diabetic retinopathy) and following vision loss can be prevented if the disease is detected at early stage. Annual retinal checks (screenings) are mandatory for everyone with diabetes. However current retinal imaging machines (fundus cameras) are expensive and there are not even enough eye doctors in the world to provide these screenings for everyone who are at risk. This makes screenings currently expensive and available only for small percent of all diabetics. Therefore, low cost hand held fundus cameras, connected to AI for easy screening and instant automatic diagnosis are urgently needed to prevent millions of people from going blind each year because of diabetic retinopathy.
The overall objectives are to develop customized camera that is connected to cloud solution with AI algorithms for automatic diagnosis based on captured images, to validate the solution via clinical trials and commercial pilots and to introduce commercial solution to the market.