Older people suffer disproportionately from poor vision as eyesight deteriorates upon aging, you typically lose first the ability to focus on nearby objects and then slowly getting blind by cataracts, the clouding of the eye lens. All people over 45 suffer from nearby vision problems, or presbyopia, and upon the age of 65 over 50-60% of the people have cataracts . Due to the fast aging population in Europe, these numbers will rise dramatically and it has been forecasted that in 2030 half of its citizens would have presbyopia and around 70 million people cataracts . Each year, 4.3 million cataract patients in Europe get their eye lens replaced with an IOL , making it the most common operation. In addition, 700,000 patients in Europe receive a laser refractive surgery . Thus, there is a fast-growing group of patients that would benefit from our innovative technology.
Currently, around 430,000 cataract patients in Europe get a multifocal lens and 30-35% (around 130,000) of them are not satisfied with their vision due to the photic phenomena, especially evident under conditions with less light such as night driving. For the laser treatments, the dissatisfaction rates are around 10%, resulting in 70, 000 people in Europe with permanent vision problems. Thus, in total more than 200,000 patients in Europe have problems with their eyesight.
Voptica SL has developed a disruptive innovation in eye testing that allows the patient to experience these optical solutions before surgery, helping the patient and doctor to select their best solution and understand what their vision will be like post-surgery. Voptica’s technology offers the possibility to patients to experience for example their multifocal IOLs before surgery and concurrently reduces testing time, standardizes eye tests and enables to predict the effect of optical solutions before they are implemented.
Our VAO will benefit every patient by optimizing their visual outcomes, but at the same time can ensure their expectations are realistic as many patients believe surgery will give them perfect vision.
VAO is currently the only medical device in the world that can measure objectively the lower- and higher-order eye aberrations of patients and, subsequently, simulate the different optical solutions to correct the patient’s eye imperfections during visual testing. The real vision experience of the patient during testing can be further personalized by adding different visual conditions, e.g. far or near distance, darkness, exactly adjusted to the patient’s daily needs.
VAO offers a technology to personalize optical solutions and will benefit every patient by optimizing their visual outcomes, but at the same time can ensure their expectations are realistic as many patients believe surgery will give them perfect vision. VAO can achieve a cost-effective method that will meet precisely these needs of the market.
Overall, the unprecedented real vision experience offered by VAO will personalize optical solutions for patients and unlock new opportunities in the profitable ophthalmology market. Currently, Voptica has installed some prototypes in research groups and hospitals as well as to influential lens manufacturers. However, we have identified three main barriers that are hindering Voptica to enter the profitable clinical market:
1.- Clinics cannot buy our instrument as they need it to be validated in clinical studies by third parties.
2.- VAO requires a make-over of its soft- and hardware to fine-tune it to the needs of clinical use.
3.- Difficult to enter the clinical market due to its conservative nature and guidelines.
This project focuses on removing these barriers.
