PeriVision awarded EUR 1.5 million

Currently, 80 million people worldwide suffer from glaucoma, a chronic eye disease that leads to blindness. But the increasing number of those affected and limits to specialized eye care infrastructure cause a significant percentage of these people not to be diagnosed or not get timely doctors’ appointments to slow down disease progression.

PeriVision wants to ease the burden on the healthcare system and allow everyone easy access to glaucoma care through an innovative portable, fast and easy-to-use Virtual Reality headset supported by visual field testing software to measure glaucoma progression. The startup’s patented machine learning algorithm cuts down examination times to have more reliable results.

The technology is being clinically tested and supported by key opinion leaders in ophthalmology. The team – around CEO Patrick Kessel, CTO Serife Kucur, and scientific advisor and board member Prof. Raphael Sznitman –works in close collaboration with the Inselspital Ophthalmology Department as a clinical partner to help avoid preventable blindness across the world.

Wild Card prize: EUR 1.5 million
Backed by EIT Health and supported by the European Union, the annual Wild Card 10-week program builds and supports new ventures tackling some of European healthcare’s greatest challenges. It offers coaching and mentorship to the founders-to-be and invests up to EUR 1.5 million in the two most promising ventures.

For the 2021 challenge, the PeriVision team convinced the jury with their “Eye & Vision Care” solution. The startup stood out from 16 applying teams in the first “Deep Dive” phase and eight remaining teams in the competitive “Business Validation” phase.

During the second phase, the Perivision team learned about designing its business model, determining the initial beachhead market, its value proposition to the clinicians and exit plans. According to the startup’s CTO and co-founder, Serife Seda Kucur, “We conducted more than 100 interviews with different stakeholders to validate our business. We were coached by leading experts in the field and had weekly meetings with them where we were given feedback on the progress and how to improve.”

Besides the investment, Perivision received access to dedicated mentors, the EIT Health network and further acceleration and funding programs. “We will use this initial money to finalize our product, get the CE and FDA approvals for our medical device and in the meantime prepare our product launch for Europe and US“, said Seda Kucur.

(Press release/RAN)