Since winning the Vodafone Americas Foundation Wireless Innovation Project (WIP), two startups originating from the MIT Media Lab, eyeMITRA (2014) and EyeNetra (2011), continue experiencing success as they grow. Over the last six months, they garnered industry awareness, built new partnerships, and added new talent to their teams.
2011 WIP winner EyeNetra’s mission is to grant everyone access to the vision correction that they need. The team developed an inexpensive mobile visual testing tool, which is a clip-on eyepiece for mobile phones that can instantly screen for eye conditions and transmit data to an optometrist. This allows for early treatment of common refractive eye disorders and cataracts.
2014 WIP winner eyeMITRA concentrates on the retina. Their team developed a mobile phone attachment for imaging of the retina to provide real-time health status assessment and potential diagnosis. The tool is targeted toward detection and monitoring of retinal diseases as well as systemic illnesses that manifest in the retina, such as diabetes.
In November 2014, eyeMITRA presented at the Exponential Medicine Conference held in San Diego. In addition to demonstrating their technology, eyeMITRA competed in the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE, a $2.25 million global competition to accelerate the availability of hardware sensors and software sensing technology to improve health and well-being. eyeMITRA’s growing presence in the healthcare industry was further validated when they were named a finalist during the competition.
Furthermore, eyeMITRA experienced positive feedback from two design innovation workshops that they organized for students in India. They collaborated with LVPEI on the “engineering the eye” workshop and collaborated with IITB with their “re-engineering health” workshop. Because both events were so well-received, two students that attended joined the eye care diagnostics team, bringing new talent to eyeMITRA.
eyeMITRA and EyeNetra hope that their research will result with new trials and case studies to expand the positive impact they have already demonstrated in the US, India, and—hopefully soon—globally.