Bethesda-based health technology company RightEye LLC has acquired exclusive rights to tests it says could help doctors diagnose autism and Parkinson’s disease earlier and more accurately than ever before.
The company, which specializes in using eye-tracking and gaming technology for diagnostic health tests, expects to make the two tests available to health providers in early 2017 through the RightEye platform launched earlier this year. RightEye declined to disclose the acquisition costs.
The company plans to pursue Food and Drug Administration approval for the tests, said Barbara Barclay, president of RightEye. She estimates the market is valued in the billions of dollars. “I think it will have a profound impact on health care,” she said.
One of RightEye's new licenses is for an eye movement test that can identify the early stages of autism in infants as young as 12 months old. That test, called the GeoPref Autism Test, was developed by a neurology researcher at the University of California San Diego’s Autism Center of Excellence. The test works by comparing the amount of time a child spends looking at videos of people with the amount of time he or she spends looking at videos of geometric shapes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates approximately one in 68 children in the U.S., or about 1.5 percent, have been identified with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends intervention in cases of autism before age 3, but children are often not diagnosed until later, Barclay said.
Its other license tracks eye movement to help identify Parkinson’s and other rare movement disorders, including Huntington’s disease, in patients over 12 years old. The test can identify the disorders before a patient is symptomatic, Barclay said. The test, developed by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth Universityand the Southeast/Richmond Veteran’s Affairs Parkinson’s Disease Research, Education and Clinical Centers, takes five minutes to administer and measures a person’s ability to quickly follow images as they move on a screen.
The Parkinson’s Disease Foundation estimates as many as 1 million Americans have Parkinson’s diseases and about 60,000 more are diagnosed with the disease every year, not counting the thousands of cases that go undetected.
Traditional diagnostic methods require MRI and PT scans that cost upward of $5,000, or five-hour cognitive tests, Barclay said. RightEye is targeting the cost of its diagnostic tests at $10 to $20, she said.
VIDEO:
Photo and document from:
http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2016/09/27/bethesda-firm-acquires-new-tests-to-diagnose.html
No comments:
Post a Comment