Partnership Announcement
Eyenuk Inc., a global artificial intelligence (AI) medical technology and services company and the leader in real-world applications for AI Eye Screening™, announced today that the Medical Retina Center and the Diabetic Retinopathy Telescreening Program of the University Eye Clinic of Genoa DINOGMI IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino, Italy has successfully expanded their diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening program by leveraging the EyeArt® AI Eye Screening System. On January 17, 2020, Dr. Donatella Musetti of the Medical Retina Center at the University Eye Clinic of Genoa presented strong EyeArt results on first 712 patients at the Macula in Liguria 2020 Conference.
"Our experience [with EyeArt] was so positive, our institution decided to purchase and adopt the EyeArt AI Eye Screening System into our DR screening routine, and it has been running fault-free ever since." - Professor Massimo Nicolò, MD, PhD
The University Eye Clinic of Genoa is directed by Professor C.E. Traverso and is one of Italy’s major cultural and scientific institutions in the Mediterranean and Northwestern Region. “Our Institution is a regional organisation committed to investing in innovation for active and healthy ageing and supporting the transfer and scaling-up of that innovation across Europe,” said Massimo Nicolò, MD PhD, associate professor at the University Eye Clinic of Genoa who leads the Medical Retina Center and the Program for Diabetic Retinopathy Telescreening. “For this reason, we are recognized as Reference Site by the European Innovation Program on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP-AHA) sponsored by the European Commission.”
“We researched into the different AI systems available for DR screening and performed an initial trial of the EyeArt software. Our experience was so positive, our institution decided to purchase and adopt the EyeArt AI Eye Screening System into our DR screening routine, it has been running fault-free ever since,” continued Professor Nicolò, who wants to recognize the hard work by Dr. Donatella Musetti and the rest of his staff. The University Eye Clinic of Genoa was also involved in Italy’s first national prevention and diagnosis campaign for retinal and diabetic maculopathy, where a total of 2,200 patients were screened at 30 centers across Italy, with more than half of these patients chosen for EyeArt AI Eye Screening.
In Italy, an estimated 3.2 million patients have diabetes. As many as 25% are estimated to be affected by diabetic retinopathy (DR),[i] the main cause of vision impairment and blindness among working-age adults. The EyeArt AI System uses artificial intelligence algorithms to autonomously analyze images of patient eyes taken with a retinal camera. Of the patients who underwent EyeArt AI Eye Screening in Italy’s first national prevention and diagnosis campaign for retinal and diabetic maculopathy, 214 patients were identified as having referable DR never diagnosed before; all were referred to eye care specialists to help save their vision.
The EyeArt AI System is the most extensively validated AI technology for autonomous detection of DR to date, tested in real-world settings on more than a half-million patient visits with more than 2 million images collected globally. In a prospective, pivotal clinical trial on more than 900 patients, the EyeArt System was shown to have 95.5% sensitivity and 86% specificity for detecting referable DR as compared to a rigorous ETDRS clinical reference standard.
[i] https://www.istat.it/en/archivio/202712