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At the 2021 American Academy of Ophthalmology annual meeting, Dr Ted Leng presented his talk entitled “Variations in Vitreoretinal Physician Utilization of Ancillary Testing: An IRIS Registry Analysis” during Retina Specialty Day. The IRIS Registry Analysis considered how many ancillary tests were ordered on a per patient basis, accounting for a variety of factors to identify patterns.

 This is a really exciting study that we conducted using the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s IRIS registry, given just a large amount of data that's in there. And as a retinal physician, we are super reliant on ancillary testing in our everyday practices to see, you know, which patients have retinal disease and how we're managing them.

So what we wanted to do in this study was to look at the utilization of ancillary tests by retinal physicians in the United States on retinal patients.

To go into some more detail, this was a three-year study, where we looked at retinal physicians from January 2018 to December 2020. And look at the amount of OCTs, fundus photographs and fluorescein angiograms they were performing. And then we normalized that data and looked at how physicians in different regions throughout the United States were using these tests, whether certain payers like Medicare or non-Medicare were utilizing these tests, and then also different practice settings, such as academic medical centres versus non-academic medical centres.

What we found was actually quite interesting. Once we did normalize the data, we did see that physicians in the Midwest region—and we use the four regions of the US Census Bureau—so the Midwestern states actually were performing more OCTs on a per patient basis than physicians in other regions. Medicare patients were getting more OCTS on a per patient basis per year than non-Medicare patients. And lastly, patients cared for in a non-academic medical centre, were getting more OCTs on a per patient basis than that not.

So I think, while those results in and of themselves are interesting, we then delve deeper into trying to ask why we saw these differences in practice patterns amongst retinal physicians. And one of the things that we looked into was the volume of wet macular degeneration patients as a kind of benchmark to see if that affected the use of OCT-A, for example.

So what we did was we asked, does a physician who sees more wet AMD patients per year use more OCT or less OCT than someone who doesn't do as many wet macular degeneration patients.

And what we did find was that retinal doctors who saw more wet AMD patients also ordered more OCTs in general.

And what we did with that information, is we went back and did a reanalysis of the data, our findings, and saw that yes, indeed, Midwestern physicians also see more wet AMD patients than non-Midwestern physicians. And that could help to explain why more OCTs are being performed in the Midwest on a per patient basis.

And similarly, in the Medicare population, there are more new wet AMD patients. And in the non-academic medical centre setting, there are more wet AMD patients that are new. So that's why it could help to explain why we are performing as a specialty more OCTs and other ancillary tests in those regions. And in those pair types in this practice settings.

What are the implications for the larger community? I just think it's really good to know, you know, how we're practicing medicine, what the patterns of utilization of our ancillary testing is, so that we can then better inform how to make our practices more efficient, how to better deliver care to the patients, and maybe even identify underserved populations.

You know, one thing we did see was that in the Medicaid population, there was less OCT-A utilization. And so we do need to delve deeper into maybe an explanation as to why that is, but they could be an indication that that populations being under cared for and underserved. And maybe, you know, we need to be ordering more tests to, to better manage those patients. So I think that's one of the potential takeaways from this presentation.

Videos

Dr Ted Leng discusses his presentation, “Variations in Vitreoretinal Physician Utilization of Ancillary Testing: An IRIS Registry Analysis” during Retina Specialty Day at AAO 2021.

Delving into ancillary testing frequency based on the IRIS registry

At the 2021 American Academy of Ophthalmology annual meeting, Dr Robert J. Noecker; director of glaucoma, Ophthalmic Consultants of Connecticut, assistant clinical professor, Yale School of Medicine and clinical professor, Quinnipiac University School of Medicine; spoke with the 

team about the IRIDEX consensus paper. This paper tackles the best practices and treatment settings for the IRIDEX MicroPulse transscleral therapy for glaucoma.

 All right. So I was honoured to be a member of this consensus panel looking at MicroPulse treatment for glaucoma. And it was a consensus panel where we did a delphi method of coming to kind of best practices around treatment settings for the IRIDEX MicroPulse transscleral therapy for glaucoma. And some of the takeaway points were, in terms of the treatment parameters, is slowing down sweep speed.

So this concept of fluence which is most influenced in this treatment by sweep speed. So how quickly we move the laser probe during therapy really was one of the biggest drivers when we determine what the best way to treat or what's the best way to influence the amount of energy delivered for the therapy.

So also, we discussed optimal power settings on the laser as well as total treatment time.

So as initial settings what the consensus panel came to the best settings use or 2.5 watts, for at a sweep speed of 20 seconds per sweep. And then 80 seconds per hemisphere for a total treatment time 160 seconds. So we sweep back and forth in one hemisphere 20 seconds, go back, do that four times and then go around the top. 

And that way when we do this transscleral treatment for lowering eye pressure, we found that the side effect profile was very minimal. Many of the treating experts often don't see the patients for the first post-op week, it is a very safe therapy. Patients can really resume their lifestyles very quickly.

Also, the efficacy was maintained. So we found that the best efficacy—because historically with, with MicroPulse therapy, many early users were probably under treating a bit and that would sacrifice efficacy as well. So we found that the power settings of 2.5 watts with the slower sweep speed, both increasing total energy as well as the fluid supplied to the eye really resulted in optimal and results with this therapy.

So what this means ultimately for patients going forward is I think it really expands the range of therapy that we can use MicroPulse transscleral treatment. It gives us confidence to get good efficacy in patients with more advanced disease, where the most important thing, high pressures—we really need to lower the pressures down into the normal range again and try to reduce some of their medication load—but also in the earlier patients where they may be on a few medications but not having problems with tolerability or acquisition, but not like crazy high pressures. We can lower intraocular pressures down but also more importantly in that group, get them off of eyedrops.

So it's really expanded the utility of MicroPulse transscleral therapy for the treatment of glaucoma.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) annual meeting was held November 12 to 15 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Centre in New Orleans, Louisiana. The event included Subspecialty Days and a virtual component for remote participation.

Robert J. Noecker, MD, MBA, discusses the IRIDEX consensus paper regarding MicroPulse transscleral therapy for glaucoma at AAO 2021.

Investigating best practices for MicroPulse transscleral therapy for glaucoma

At the 2021 American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) meeting, Dr Felipe Medeiros of the Duke Eye Centre presented data on Durysta. Dr Michael R. Robinson, Vice President and Global Therapeutic Area Head of AbbVie, sits down to discuss these results.

. I'm joined today by Dr Michael Robinson, who will discuss data on Durysta, presented at the recently concluded American Academy of Ophthalmology 2021 annual meeting. Thank you for joining us today, Dr Robinson.

 Well, thank you, David. And thank you for the invitation. So I could present some of the Durysta data, talk about this at the 2021 AAO annual meeting. In glaucoma, we did present data on Durysta, which is an intracameral, biodegradable, sustained-release implant that slowly releases bimatoprost.

The first author on this abstract was Felipe Medeiros at the Duke Eye Centre. The implant was FDA approved in March of 2020 for single administration, for lowering the intraocular pressure in patients with open angle glaucoma or ocular hypertension.

The preclinical studies show drug release is complete, and intraocular tissue drug levels are undetectable by about four months after implant administration. However, in clinical trials with Durysta, the duration of IOP lowering had extended beyond the implant drug release. We presented data from an ongoing 24-month extension study of the Phase 3 ARTEMIS studies, assessing the efficacy and duration of the bimatoprost implant.

Patients in the Phase 3 trials received three implants total: one at baseline, one at four months, and then the last one at eight months, then they were followed out to 20 months total follow-up.

What we saw was that there were so many patients that had not been rescued at that 20-month time point that we needed to do an extension study to see how long the implant would actually last. They had received a 10-microgram dose, which is the marketed Durysta, or a 15-microgram dose. And we presented the pooled data in this abstract.

After the 20-month ARTEMIS study, patients then could voluntarily enrol in the extension study to look at the duration of IOP lowering beyond the length of that original study that ended at 20 months. Rescue with topical IOP lowering drops was allowed if in the opinion of the investigator of the study eye did not meet or maintain IOP expectations.

The outcome measures included the number of patients who had received no additional rescue IOP lowering treatment in the study eye for greater than two years and three years after the third implant administration in the ARTEMIS trials.

We also looked at the IOP and visual field mean deviation in the study eye of these patients. Results show that approximately 200 patients had volunteered to be enrolled in the extension study after completing an ARTEMIS trial. 69 had not been rescued yet at screening, 54 patients remained untreated for greater than two years after the third implant administration in the ARTEMIS trial, and 18 patients remained untreated for greater than three years after the third implant administration in the ARTEMIS trial.

The main baseline IOP is of these patients in these super responders were in the 23 to 24 range at the start of the ARTEMIS trials, and at the last mean IOP documented in the extension studies, the IOP was in the 16 to 17 range—off drops. The mean deviation of visual field testing of the super responder patients were stable over the past two to three years following their last implant.

So in conclusion, after their last bimatoprost implant treatment in the Phase 3 trials, patients can have a sustained IOP lowering for greater than two years, some greater than three years, without any additional treatment, and they maintained stable visual fields. The prolonged effect on IOP lowering could result from the bimatoprost stimulated upregulation of matrix metalloproteinases, leading to sustained tissue remodelling of outflow pathways. Clinical studies are in progress to further understand the duration of IOP lowering of Durysta and factors that may predict this long-term response.

At AAO, AbbVie presented results from the ARTEMIS study, showcasing IOP lowering that extends beyond the original 20-month timeframe.

Bimatoprost implant successfully lowers IOP in Phase 3 of the ARTEMIS study

Dr Jill Hopkins, Senior Vice President and Global Development Unit Head, Ophthalmology, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, sits down with David Hutton of 

 to discuss the recent results of the Phase 3a results of the Merlin trial.

Brolucizumab (Beovu, Novartis Pharmaceuticals) is being investigated for the treatment of both wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in the MERLIN trial and diabetic macular oedema (DMO) in the KESTREL and KITE trials.

. We are joined today by Jill Hopkins, Senior Vice President and Global Development Unit Head, Ophthalmology, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, who will provide an update on data the company presented at the American Academy of Ophthalmology is 2021 annual meeting. Thanks for joining us today.

Thanks, David. It's a pleasure to be here. Happy to share with you some of the noteworthy data that we presented at the AAO meeting this past week. We presented on Beovu in both wet AMD and DMO, and I'll speak about both of those.

In wet AMD, we presented the results of our Phase 3a Merlin trial, Dr Khanani presented that. And this was a trial where we looked at the use of Beovu on a monthly basis to treat wet AMD in patients who had persistent disease activity, despite having been treated with prior anti-VEGF. And we were very interested in exploring the capacity, capability, of Beovu to dry the retina and maintain vision in patients in that situation.

And so we looked at monthly Beovu compared to monthly aflibercept. And we found some very interesting results. What we saw, similar to what we'd seen in our pivotal trials with AMD, that we did have noninferiority vision and strong evidence of drying. So we actually were able to show superior drying effects in both the reduction in the central subfield thickness on the OCT measurement, and in the proportion of patients who were fluid free at the end of year one.

We did unfortunately, however, see higher rates of inflammation in the Beovu treated eyes—about 9% in Beovu compared to about 4.5% in aflibercept. And for that reason, we are maintaining our currently labelled dosing recommendation, which is the three loading doses followed then by extension to Q8 or Q12 week dosing and not recommending the monthly in Beovu.

So the other piece of work that we have been presenting and have submitted for approval is our use of Beovu in diabetic macular oedema.

So again, we've conducted two pivotal trials, and these were reported at AAO as well, KITE and KESTREL, where we looked at the use of Beovu with a loading phase and then extended intervals. And we're pleased to see in diabetic macular oedema as well, this sustained drying, fewer injections and maintenance of visual acuity.

So we're excited by this particularly in a condition like diabetes, where we know that patients are often still working, they're trying to manage multiple health issues related to their diabetes. So anything that we might be able to offer retinal physicians and patients that reduces the burden of injection frequency, while still maintaining very good anatomic control and maintaining vision is exciting to us. And we have submitted those for regulatory approval in the US, in Europe and in Japan. So we're hoping for a positive readout of those submissions in the middle of 2022.

Dr Jill Hopkins discusses results from phase 3a of the Merlin trial for brolucizumab as a treatment for wet AMD and provides updates on KESTREL and KITE trials for the treatment of diabetic macular oedema.

Updates on brolucizumab for treatment of wet AMD and DMO

Dr Penny Asbell discussed data from the ARMOR study with the editors of 

 at AAO 2021. The ARMOR study is a 10-year nationwide study examining in vitro antibiotic resistance among isolates that have been collected from ocular infections. The data sheds light on the effects of antibiotic resistance while treating ophthalmic infections, such as endophthalmitis.

The Antibiotic Resistance Monitoring in Ocular Microorganisms (ARMOR) surveillance study has identified high levels of in vitro antibiotic resistance among ocular staphylococcal and pneumococcal pathogens, resistance that may affect treatment success.

Dr Asbell is the director of the Hamilton Eye Institute at the University of Tennessee Health Science Centre.

So, you know, ophthalmologists, we really like to get a lot of data. We take pictures, we take images, we take measurements. But with infection, we really got to start treating right away. And one of the questions is, what antibiotic should we start with?

So actually the ARMOR study, which is the only surveillance study done in the United States of ocular isolates, is a real good source of information when you're getting started.

So, we collect ocular isolates from over 44 sites and 22 states over the last 10 years. And in this particular study, we looked at isolates that were collected from either the aqueous, or the vitreous, presumably a patient who had serious infections such as endophthalmitis.

And what was most interesting is that nearly 50% of them were staph isolates that were methicillin resistant, so a high level of resistance to methicillin. But equally interesting is those methicillin resistant isolates, over 70% of them were resistant to three or more other groups of antibiotics. So you got to realize resistance is out there.

Now, this is laboratory testing. It's a standardized method. It's not actually clinical. In clinical, you might do a lot better than laboratory test suggests, but you got to start somewhere. It's a really good way of getting some information right off the bat, even while you're waiting for those cultures.

So think about resistance, it's not uncommon, whether it's staph aureus—we didn't see as much with strep pneumonia, and pseudomonas did pretty well, and so did the H. flu. But that staph still is a problem for us with the methicillin and the multi-drug resistance. So keep that in mind when you're picking an antibiotic.

So, you know, we've collected in the ARMOR study over 6000 isolates, and we're starting to try to understand what are the mechanisms of pathogenicity? What makes an isolate more serious than another isolate? And is it actually the isolate itself, or the interaction between the isolate, the organism, and its genetics and the person who gets infected?

So there's a lot of information there and a lot of opportunities to really understand infection more specifically, and maybe have new interventions for treating more effectively. So, we're gonna use that data to the best we can to give us the best information to be able to treat our patients the best way. So stay tuned for ARMOR data, we keep coming. Thank you for listening.

At the 2021 American Academy of Ophthalmology annual meeting, Dr Penny Asbell discussed data from the ARMOR study and its effects on treating ophthalmic infections, such as endophthalmitis.

Shedding light on antibiotic resistance in ophthalmology with ARMOR study data

At the 2021 American Academy of Ophthalmology annual meeting, Greg Kunst, CEO of Aurion Biotech, presented their plans to initiate clinical trials for cell therapy for the treatment of corneal endothelial disease.

This technology propagates healthy cells from donor cornea, allowing up to 100 recipient eyes to be treated from a single donor sample. In Japan, the clinical trial has successfully demonstrated safety, efficacy and tolerability of Vyznova, the lead candidate of Aurion Biotech.

 Yeah, so we presented on what could be a potential to be a major game change in the way that we treat corneal endothelial disease here in the United States around the world. So we're doing this with cell therapy. Today that cures blindness, restores vision, to potentially 16 million people in the US, Europe and Japan affected by corneal endothelial disease. And the reason why I think it's a potential game changer is really for four simple reasons.

One, it's an injection of cells, and therefore can be used by a broad spectrum of ophthalmologists around the world, dramatically increasing the number of treaters available for corneal endothelial disease.

Two, this, this is using natural human endothelial cells, because of that safety profile is quite pristine, potentially allowing us to move this treatment earlier in the treatment paradigm.

Third, it's already been proven. We've done this drug now, in over 100 patients with some of those patients with five more years of experience in four different trials with Japan and in El Salvador. We know the drug works.

Fourth and most importantly, it scales. Unlike today, where we need a donor for every person treated for corneal endothelial disease, with every donor with a part in cell therapy, we get 100 treatments today. In the future, you know, one to 1,000, maybe one to 10,000. This all has all the hallmarks to be the really the next great innovation in ophthalmology.

Well, so number one is we know there are about 13 million people around the world that are corneally blind. And usually one of the primary reasons that we see corneal blindness is the lack of available corneal tissue around the world. Even the United States, we reserve corneal surgical transplant really for the worst patients. And because of this, we believe that we can reach many more patients with corneal endothelial disease, including Fuchs dystrophy or post keratopathy.

And so I think, certainly, it's an area where lots of people are untreated. And now in the future, with the approval, we'll have a way to treat patients most early disease process.

So our next stages is to enter trials for the United States. Obviously the clinical trial process takes time. This is a rare technology because of the prior clinical data, generated in Japan and El Salvador, we know it works. Now it's the test of time of clinical trials, and at the end of these trials, we are hopeful, optimistic, that we'll be able to get approval from the FDA and many other regulators around the world.

New cell therapy drug makes treatment of corneal endothelial disease more accessible.

Cell therapy for corneal endothelial disease proves successful in Japan, El Salvador

At AAO, Dr Jay Duker sat down with the editors of 

® to discuss EyePoint Pharmaceuticals’ pipeline product EYP-1901. As a sustained-release anti-VEGF, EYP-1901 has the potential to be a durable treatment option for wet AMD, possibly extending time between injections to six months.

EYP-1901 has completed Phase 1 clinical trials for treatment of wet AMD. The biannual injection is vorolanib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor, which is distributed by EyePoint Pharmaceuticals’ proprietary Durasert implant. The implant is bio-erodible and has a history of safety: four products have been FDA-approved for use with Durasert.

 I'm going to talk about our new exciting pipeline product, EYP-1901. EYP-1901 is a sustained-release anti-VEGF, which has the potential to be an every six month injection for wet macular degeneration. EYP-1901 is vorolanib, which is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor which has activity against all the VEGF receptors. It is in our proprietary Durasert implant. The Durasert implant and the EYP-1901 is bio-erodible. We've had four FDA-approved products using Durasert, so there's a long history of safety for the product.

Vorolanib was tested previously in both a Phase 1 and Phase 2 trial in humans for wet macular degeneration as an oral preparation. And while it showed good efficacy signals in those investigations, unfortunately, it was toxic systemically. So by using it locally, we expect to get around the toxicity. And in fact, the Phase 1 results which were recently presented at the AAO meeting by David Boyer showed that we had a very impressive safety profile.

In the 17 patients in the Phase 1 trial, we had no ocular serious adverse events. We had no drug-related systemic adverse events. The adverse events that were reported were grade two or less in all cases, except one, which was not drug-related. So we feel that the safety profile looked very strong.

We also showed evidence of efficacy. All of these patients who were previously treated and previously treated wet AMD patients get most of their visual acuity improvement in the first three months. Since they all were enrolled four months or longer, we didn't expect any visual acuity improvements, but we hoped for stability. And in fact, that's what we found. With the 17 patients at the end of six months, the only change in visual acuity across the whole cohort was approximately minus two letters.

With respect to OCT, which is a measurement of VEGF activity, again, we expected stability in this previously treated group. And that's we found. At the end of six months, there was a small decrease in the retinal thickness on OCT of a very minimal amount, about two microns.

We also had what we feel is a very impressive rescue free rate, up to the four-month visit. 76% of the eyes did not require a rescue standard of care injection, and up to six months, 53% of eyes did not require a standard of care rescue injection. We also measured what we refer to as treatment burden. How many injections on average per month did the patients get prior to enrolment? And then for the six months, after how many injections standard of care did they require? We had what we feel as a very clinically significant decrease of a burden of the injections by 79% across the entire cohort.

So we're very excited by David Boyer’s presentation and we look forward to taking this product into multiple Phase 2 trials in 2022.

Dr Jay Duker discusses EYP-1901, EyePoint Pharmaceuticals’ sustained-release anti-VEGF drug for the treatment of wet AMD.

Phase 1 study results for new sustained-release anti-VEGF formulation, EYP-1901

Michelle Senchyna, PhD, spoke with Modern Retina at the American Academy of Ophthalmology 2021 annual meeting about the phase 2b study results of AR-15512 for the treatment of dry eye. The TRPM8 antagonist stimulates the production of tears and creates a cooling sensation across the ocular surface to treat both signs and symptoms of dry eye. Two concentrations were tested in the trial; both formulations were found to be safe and well-tolerated.

 Hello everyone, my name is Michelle Senchyna. I am the vice president of both clinical development and medical affairs at Aerie Pharmaceuticals, and I'm at AAO and pleased to talk to you. We just presented the results from our phase 2b study on our asset AR-15512, which is a TRPM8agonist.

TRPM8 is a neat little receptor. It causes, when stimulated, the production of tears as well as a cooling sensation across the ocular surface. And so because of those mechanisms, we think it will be a fantastic asset to treat the signs and symptoms of dry eye.

In our relatively large phase 2b study, a total of 369 patients that were randomized between two different concentrations of 512 as well as vehicle, we saw very statistically significant increases in tear production with both concentrations of 512. It was actually the high dose, 0.003%, that demonstrated the most robust efficacy, upwards of 20 mm of wetting on an uninitialized Schirmer.

When we looked at the data a different way based on a responder analysis, where a responder is someone that has an increase of at least 10 mm of wetting, between 82–86% of the population in the high dose were responders. It's just a phenomenal response.

Now, symptom-wise was even more exciting. We saw statistically significant improvements with the high dose of 512, first based on a SANDE questionnaire as early as day 14. And then the magnitude of that improvement actually got better at day 28 and 84, relative to vehicle. We also saw statistically significant improvements in ocular discomfort and eye dryness both at day 84.

And then lastly, we showed some really unique data, and that is, signs and symptoms are something that really resonates to the clinician. But at the end of the day, we know quality of life is what matters to patients. And so we saw with again, the high dose of 512, very statistically significant improvements in a number of different measures of quality of life, things like driving or reading or watching TV. And that was just very exciting—again, as early as day 14. So these folks are definitely getting better, and consistent with the sign and symptom improvement.

From a safety perspective, all formulations were safe and well-tolerated. The number of ocular adverse events that we had was normal, and 95% of those were reported as mild by the subjects.

So in sum, we are just really very excited about the data. We showed multiple sign and symptom improvements quality of life improvements. We have selected the high dose of 512 to go into phase 3 development. We are going to be starting those studies early next year, and I am really looking forward to being able to share more data with you in the near future. So thank you very much.

At AAO 2021, Aerie Pharmaceuticals presented the results of their phase 2b clinical trial of AR-15512, a TRPM8 antagonist, for the treatment of dry eye.

Phase 2b study results of AR-15512 for the treatment of dry eye

At the American Academy of Ophthalmology annual meeting, Marc Berger, COO of Verana Health, discussed the VeraQ quality measures dashboard for the IRIS registry report. It is anticipated to launch in 2022.

VeraQ is AI-enhanced health data engine that utilizes the Axon, AQUA and IRIS registries to report on unfiltered healthcare data. Additionally, it enables compliance with Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), meeting care quality measurements required by the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). It also helps to identify patients who qualify for a clinical trial.

 Very excited to be here with everyone. In terms of the IRIS registry, I think this is the first year where Verana actually has been ingesting and curating data directly from participating practices.

So we are working end-to-end processing of EHR data, where we're partnering with practices and our technology on our platform, the VeraQ platform, brings in the data, and then organizes in a way which which more effectively processes the data and gives us a better sense of for analysing this information. And in turn, we're able to then provide better insights, more accurate calculations for MIPS specifically, but then they're also use cases that are going to be developed on top of that.

So our use cases are developing particularly around the MIPS calculations and our quality measures. So participating practice will have better and more accurate information, accurate data, be able to run their practices more effectively, and ultimately treat patients with better care.

And that's really the, the keystone of what we're accomplishing over these past two years in our partnership with the AAO. The quality measures database is now being powered by our VeraQ platform. And this platform, like we discussed is more effective from a technological perspective. We've got proprietary algorithms using the data that's provided by participating practices. We're able to provide more accurate and more effective data sets which can then lead to better calculations for MIPS and better-quality reporting, just giving doctors and the administrators as part of these practices, better information within their practices.

Verana Health showcases the VeraQ quality measures dashboard for the IRIS registry report at AAO 2021.

Verana Health's new quality measures dashboard unveiled at AAO 2021

At the 2021 American Academy of Ophthalmology annual meeting, Dr Mohamed Abou Shousha, founder, president and CEO of Heru; spoke with the 

team about Heru and their new diagnostic platform, re:Vive 2.0. The new device now monitors color vision, contrast sensitivity and dark adaptation.

 My name is Mohamed Abou Shousha. I'm the CEO and founder of Heru. I'm also a practicing ophthalmologist from Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.

Heru was born out of necessity from Bascom Palmer, where we see 300,000 patients every year. And we know all the gaps in vision care. And we created Heru to address those gaps.

Heru is a wearable platform that is AI powered. It has many verticals to it: health and wellness eye exams, diagnostic eye exams, home monitoring and chronic disease management. And we close the loop by providing vision augmentations to patients to allow them to live their best lives.

I'm very excited to announce that we have launched Heru re:Vive 2.0, which is our FDA-registered diagnostic platform. It provides six diagnostic tests, five CPT codes in one wearable device. We provide suprathreshold visual field testing, full threshold visual field testing, Ishihara, D-15, contrast sensitivity and dark adaptation—and that's all in one device.

The status quo are devices, each one of them that would take a room, a separate room, a technician, a workflow, and it's about like $30–50,000. We replace all those by one wearable device.

Our science is solid. We have shown equivalency to the standard of care. So for the patient, this means better access to vision care, better vision care, better experience and ultimately better health for the patient.

Dr Mohamed Abou Shousha discusses Heru’s wearable AI-powered diagnostic devices at AAO 2021.

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