deepeye Medical: Revolution in retinal therapy through AI
Laura Diez
Manuel Opitz, CEO and co-founder of deepeye Medical GmbH, talks about his company's groundbreaking advances in retinal therapy. Deepeye uses an AI-based precision medicine platform to help ophthalmologists develop customized therapies for their patients. In the interview, Opitz explains how deepeye uses a method based on a second expert opinion that has already been tested on over 2466 patients and has improved therapy outcomes threefold compared to the German average. Learn more about the history, challenges and vision of deepeye Medical GmbH.
How would you explain your solution to a healthcare professional in three sentences?
Despite effective medication, ⅔ of all blindness is caused by retinal diseases. deepeye's AI precision medicine platform helps ophthalmologists to customize therapy for each individual patient. To do this, deepeye uses the clinical method of expert second opinion, which has been tested on 2466 patients over 2 years and has been able to improve treatment results threefold compared to the German average and halve the dropout rate in a tele-ophthalmological network.
What problem motivated you to found the company?
Millions of retinal patients drop out of treatment despite effective medication, which leads to blindness. As I have three affected people in my family, one of whom dropped out of treatment, I was thrilled when I heard about the new clinical method of the tele-ophthalmology network in Münsterland. Based on a unique data set that goes back more than 10 years and now spans more than 200 ophthalmology practices around the world, we then developed a second opinion AI with deepeye instead of a human expert in order to make this successful therapeutic approach available to all ophthalmologists worldwide.
How do you convince a pharmaceutical company, health insurance company, insurer or other potential customer to set up a pilot project with you?
The first AI screening solutions have already been approved to detect retinal diseases earlier. We are the first assistance solution that supports ophthalmologists in therapy decisions. On average, this decision is made 6 times a year for each patient until the end of their life. Our AI solution shows the ophthalmologist more than can be read from a 3D retinal scan with the naked eye.
We are already conducting research with the leading pharmaceutical companies in retinal therapy such as Novartis, Bayer and Roche. As soon as we have received our medical device approval, we will start our own prospective studies to validate the clinical added value of our solution. The expected cost savings for health insurance companies in particular are enormous, as a patient undergoing therapy costs around €15,000 less per year than patients who drop out of therapy and go blind. In Germany alone, this represents annual savings of billions.
The operating ophthalmology centers also benefit from the safeguarding of treatment planning by our AI, on the one hand for quality assurance and on the other hand through efficient therapy planning. Under-treatment, which has been repeatedly proven in real-world studies, not only leads to irreversible loss of vision, but also to loss of remuneration for the practice.
We therefore look forward to working with ophthalmologists, pharmaceutical companies and healthcare systems on studies that bring us closer to our goal of proving the benefits of our solution to patients.
Who are your current customers (groups) and who are your potential customers?
In the first three years of our existence, we primarily worked with pharmaceutical companies to retrospectively evaluate German, Japanese and global real-world studies. We are also cooperating with healthcare systems in Europe and the USA to further improve the quality of care for this surgical eye injection therapy.
We are particularly looking forward to making our AI available to European ophthalmologists in a few months' time. Through distribution or marketing partnerships with the leading diagnostics manufacturers, practices will then be able to access our AI in their usual treatment process at the click of a button. We are also planning approval in the USA.
Where do you see yourselves in three years' time and how can 5-HT support you?
In three years, we want to have completed the first prospective studies that prove the effectiveness of AI therapy planning support. We hope that other industry and healthcare partners will join our mission to prevent blindness through AI second opinions via the 5-HT network.
deepeye Medical GmbH Team
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