Project description
New screening to reduce risk of diabetic blindness
Diabetic retinopathy is a leading cause of vision-loss in adults aged 20-74 globally. About 25 % of diabetic patients are affected by any diabetic eye disease, amounting to nearly 4 million individuals in the EU. As the prevalence of diabetes is increasing considerably due to both demographic trends and lifestyle changes, diabetic eye disease will also increase. Vision loss or blindness may be preventable through early detection. The EU-funded aiVision project will support diagnosis by developing an improved eye screening medical examination process facilitated by a telemedicine platform. It will use automated algorithms – based on a database of more than 107 000 categorised eye fundus screenings – to support diagnosis decision-making.
Objective
AiVision is a unique telemedicine cloud platform powered by deep learning AI that supports the diagnosis of sight related diseases. It is created with the objective of optimizing the detection and treatment of a highly probable cause of blindness in diabetic patients, known as diabetic retinopathy.
Diabetic Retinopathy is the leading cause of blindness affecting the population that is less than 65 years old. After 15 years of significant improvements treating diabetes, 95% of type one diabetic patients and 60% of type 2 diabetic patients suffer from at least a mild and in some cases from severe diabetic retinopathy. In 2015, 415m people suffered from diabetes and this figure will grow up to 640m in 2040. There are 4,2M diabetics in the US, and around 24,000 new cases per year of advanced retinopathy due to diabetes.
AiVision intends to solve this health problem through an improved eye screening medical examination process facilitated by a telemedicine platform and automated algorithms that support diagnosis decision making.
We have gathered a database of more than 107,000 categorized eye fundus screenings which we have use in our algorithms, we have a partnership with the French Orthoptists Syndicate (with 1,000 professionals, it represents 90% of the sector) and are running our first paid pilots in France on 90 hospitals and health centres and working with the WHO in 4 African pilots.
There is a clear willingness to pay from the market actors: orthoptist and ophthalmologists consider that the increase in screened patients will vastly contribute to early detection of signs of retinopathy, allowing for better treatment.
AiVision is the core project of AiScreenings, a start-up founded in 2017 by partners with management, research, medical sciences and IT backgrounds. The company is based at the Polytechnique Institute business incubator (France). With a team of 9, we have generated our first 100.000€ of turnover in 2018 and received a 90.000€ innovation Grant.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
91120 PALAISEAU
France
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.