Moshe Barel from NovaSight explains a new technology for a home use lazy eye treatment for children.
Cara Moore: Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us here on Optometry TV, I’m Cara Moore joined now by Moshe Barel. Thanks so much for being here. You are the Vice President of sales and marketing for NovaSight.
Moshe Barel: That’s correct. Right.
Cara Moore: Okay, so we’re here to talk about a new product that you have for amblyopia. Is that right?
Moshe Barel: That’s correct.
Cara Moore: And it’s called CureSight. So tell us about that.
Moshe Barel: So, amblyopia, the doctors know what it is. Lazy eye, affects 3% of the population and the gold standard treatment is placing a patch over the eye. Children don’t like to wear a patch over the eye, it’s a discomfort for them. It’s itchy, scratchy. It impacts their daily activities. They cannot do whatever they want because it’s covering their strong eye. We are developing the CureSight to replace the eye patch for home use. The CureSight is a tablet based device where they have to watch videos, that’s all they have to do, one hour a day, five times a week. And while they’re doing it, we’re basically using real-time 3D image processing and eye tracking technology to provide the treatments while they’re watching the video of choice.
Cara Moore: A specialized pair of glasses they’re wearing.
Moshe Barel: They’re red and blue glasses that are like the 3D glasses we are all familiar with. Yes, you have to wear it and that’s it.
Cara Moore: Kids are on their tablets anyways.
Moshe Barel: Exactly. So here they can watch whatever they want, it could be Netflix or Nickelodeon or Disney channel. And while they’re doing this, they’re being treated and they don’t have to wear the patch anymore.
Cara Moore: So what kind of problems does that solve?
Moshe Barel: So basically we’re trying to replace the eye patching, which is very problematic. It causes a lot of strained relationships within the family. Parents trying to force the children to wear the patch. Adults will never wear a patch. You can imagine, no adult will wear a patch to work or any other activities. So there is basically no solution and amblyopia has a very negative impact on quality of life and the impact on your sports ability, hand eye coordination, driving skills, reading abilities, academic achievements. So throughout the life it really has a negative impact. Therefore you need to treat the condition very early in life. And the patch was invented like 67 years ago. The same method and still the same method being used today, putting a patch over the strong eye, forcing the brain to use the lazy eye, the amblyopic eye. Compliance is very poor. Studies show that it’s less than 50%, this is the problem we are trying to address.
Cara Moore: Right. And that compliance rate, that low compliance rate is really tough for practitioners too, right. So this sort of solves that problem. Helps them out.
Moshe Barel: Yeah, exactly. Because they cannot control it. They just send off the child at home and tell them, all right, you have to wear the patch two, four, six hours a day. And they just hope the parents will be able to do it. And the children would agree and they will not pull it off while they’re in school or kindergarten or other activities that they do. And they have absolutely no control. We’ve conducted a clinical study in Israel. We got 20 children and the compliance rate was 95%, that’s not a big surprise, children like to watch videos. So it was the other way around. We had to take them away from the treatment because they wanted to see the end of the movie or whatever. So yeah, the problem is kind of solved this way. We’re engaging a solution.
Cara Moore: And I know this, excuse me, the product is still in development.
Moshe Barel: Yes, it’s still in development. We are going to have a large scale clinical trial, randomized controlled trial next year here in the US with 15 sites. And once this is finished, we could submit the 5-10K for FDA approval and it will be available here in the US in about 12 to 18 months from now.
Cara Moore: Just aimed towards children or are you hoping to branch out to adults as well?
Moshe Barel: No, definitely. We’re hoping to branch out to adults, so we’re going to do a clinical trial with adults to see that it works also with adults. But definitely we want to help all the adults that used to be children with amblyopia who didn’t get the treatment as they should because they were not compliant with the patching. They were not compliant, so they grow up to be adults with amblyopia. And we can imagine that an adult would sit and watch video as well. I mean, everybody likes to do it.
Cara Moore: Yeah. Quite a piece of technology.
Moshe Barel: Yeah, it is. It is very innovative.
Cara Moore: Thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it.
Moshe Barel: Thank you for having me.
Cara Moore: All right, thank you all for watching Optometry TV.
