The huge part medtech can play in looking after our eyes

To mark National Eye Week, Ian Bolland offers his thoughts on medtech and digital health can have a huge say in helping treat eye conditions. 

National Eye Week doesn’t just cover vision impairment and blindness in the medtech sector.

We should also be mindful of the need to people to give a little help with their eyesight when it’s probably weaker than it should be – glasses and contact lenses likely the most commonly used treatment known to the public.

Injections to address eye conditions are also a big market. There is continuous innovation in order to try and make it safer and more efficient for treatment when it comes to the removal of cataracts. The safety can come down to the materials or the function of the device that aids a doctor attending to their patient.  

As well as cataracts, innovative treatments are needed for conditions such as glaucoma, and the fact that so many conditions and diseases are linked to our eyesight means looking after our eyes is a key factor in the marketplace. The scope for medtech and digital health innovations are enormous.

Diabetes has a direct link to the health of a person’s sight, while there are cancers which affect eyesight.

There’s also diseases that has blindness as one of the symptoms. Indian healthtech company Niramai said it will develop AI technology to try and combat Onchocerciasis, commonly known as river blindness – which is currently being applied to early stage breast cancer detection. It is used to help assess the efficacy of new drugs being developed to kill adult worms.

Here it’s a case of not just targeting diseases themselves, but ensuring technology can help provide the effective prescription required for treatment.

AI has also been used in order to highlight areas where treatments could be improved – showing it has the potential to act as a starting gun for innovation.

This year we have seen the advancement in treatments such as at the Moorfields Eye hospital who developed a new approach to treating melanoma-associated retinopathy – which can cause night blindness and progressive vision loss. Increasing advancements in bionic technology means it is a huge factor in medtech.

We’ve seen developments that have aimed to improve eyesight and prevent cataracts. Two years ago we spoke to someone who created the Bionic Lens that could be a replacement in the human eye – despite those behind it admitting it could be from a 70s TV show, but in fact a reality. Less than a year ago, four patients had their eyesight restored thanks to a clinical trial in Melbourne with a bionic eye.

Continued advancements in this space can only lead to better quality of sight.