AEYE Health and Optomed Partner on Handheld AI Retinal Camera Aimed at Early Eye Disease Screening

On October 7, 2020, AEYE Health announced a clinical and commercial collaboration agreement with Optomed to develop a handheld camera that reads the retina with artificial intelligence. The planned device is called Aurora AEYE. It does not yet exist as a finished, cleared product, and everything the companies say about it depends on clinical trials that are only now getting underway.

The problem they are aiming at is one of scale. According to the announcement, more than a billion people worldwide, and more than 75 million in the United States, are at high risk of developing sight-threatening and life-threatening conditions. The company says over 75 percent of those people never get checked. That figure is AEYE's own, and the announcement does not say where it comes from.

AEYE Health is a digital health startup with offices in New York and Tel Aviv. It builds automated, AI-based screening tools for retinal imaging, meant to help clinicians detect a range of medical conditions and prevent blindness. The company says it works with academic medical centers in the United States and that its solution is already used in primary care clinics.

Optomed is a Finland-based camera maker, and its contribution is hardware: the handheld fundus camera called Aurora. Once clinical trials begin and finish successfully, Aurora AEYE would pair that camera with AEYE's software, which is designed to analyze the retina for changes associated with diabetic retinopathy. The companies say the system aims to return a diagnostic result within 60 seconds.

The agreement includes a clinical trial intended to win U.S. FDA approval for autonomous AI retinal screening. That phrase matters: autonomous means the software would produce a screening result without a specialist interpreting the image. The announcement gives no trial timeline, size, or sites.

The practical idea is to move screening out of the ophthalmologist's office. The companies describe a simple system that could be used in primary care and endocrinology clinics, or in pharmacies, where patients at risk could be examined without a separate specialist visit. They frame this as a way to broaden eye checks in both developed and developing countries.

Zack Dvey-Aharon, co-founder and CEO of AEYE Health, called the agreement a big step toward an accurate, affordable and usable way to detect retinal conditions, prevent blindness and save lives. He said combining AEYE's algorithms with Optomed's cameras is set to democratize diagnostic eye screening so that patients who need treatment get it on time, and that AEYE looks forward to leading global efforts on AI detection of a wide variety of retinal diseases.

Laura Piila, Optomed's Vice President Devices, said the partnership gives Optomed another affordable, innovative option for diabetic retinopathy screening and fits its growth strategy, particularly in the United States. She said Aurora AEYE is expected to be the first handheld AI fundus camera available on the U.S. market.

What to watch is the trial. Whether the device reaches clinics depends on its results and on FDA approval, and until then the 60-second promise and the access claims remain goals rather than demonstrated outcomes.