Telemedicine gained popularity and acceptance during the global pandemic, however, affected patients still have difficulty accessing eye care. Ocumeda from Canton Thurgau wants to change this with its cloud-based AI platform and network of partners to provide telemedicine. Venture Kick has awarded the team CHF 150’000 to roll out their solution.
Founded in 2019, Ocumeda offers easy access to eye care with its fully integrated telemedical service and a network of partners to help preserve human eyesight. “In the future, Ocumeda's innovative AI developments have the potential to support physicians in diagnosing and treating eye conditions and systemic diseases at an early stage,” said Marcel Menke, one of the co-founding members of Ocumeda.
Currently, 10-15 per cent of the population suffers from eye conditions, making Ocumeda’s service highly demanded. Today as many patients fail to get access to eye care or must wait for up to six months to get an appointment. Consequently, people do not visit the opticians – approximately 75% of the population has not seen an eye doctor in the last three to five years. The anticipated demographical changes will also increase eye diseases by 35% within the next 10 years, yet the number of ophthalmologists will unlikely change or even decrease.
The Ocumeda-platform is cloud-based and offers eye care services through B2B partners such as opticians, pharmacies, general practitioners, corporate health prevention programs, and elderly homes. Approximately 35,000 opticians and pharmacies are available as potential partners for the service. In the DACH region, which comprises approximately 100 million people, more than 50 million people are age 40+ or have relevant medical pre-conditions like diabetes and are thus potential Ocumeda customers.
The founding team consists of Jörg-Christian Kirr and Prof. Marcel N. Menke, both ophthalmologists with strong backgrounds in telemedicine and retinal diagnostics. Christoph Haarburger has a background in medical image computing and priorly built up a teleradiology startup. Benedikt Wiechers has a background in strategic consulting and he has previously led a startup accelerator program.
The team will use the CHF 150,000 from Venture Kick to enhance the offerings for connected ophthalmologists on their telemedical platform and roll out their eye screening service in Switzerland and Germany. Benedikt Wiechers added: “Venture Kick is a fantastic program that helped us to accelerate our activities through to-the-point coaching, a valuable network, and strong recognition. The funding enabled us to bring our telemedical platform to the next level and rebrand Ocumeda."
(Press release/RAN)
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