Nearly a year after raising $1 million, MIT Media Lab spin-out EyeNetra has raised another $2 million, bringing them one step closer to making optometry more accessible in the developing world.
The Somerville startup, formerly based out of the Artisan’s Asylum, leverages smartphones to develop inexpensive eye-testing technology. The company’s first diagnostic tool, NETRA-G, allows users to measure nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism by snapping the hardware onto their mobile device. Within moments, individuals can receive the measurements for their eyeglasses on their phone.
“Refractive eye exams can cost up to $300 and require hundreds of miles of travel,” writes the EyeNetra team on its website. Yet, NETRA-G “fits in a pocket and requires minimal skills to operate."
EyeNetra also has plans to create a cloud-based platform called Test2Connect, which would enable “patients and providers at the point-of-care to connect to products and services from anywhere, at anytime through [their] mobile app.”
Investors are not being named, according to the Boston Business Journal.
According to EyeNetra, 2.4 billion people worldwide don’t have glasses, but need them. Today’s eye-testing tools are expensive, bulky and require training—three traits EyeNetra is striving to avoid. With this new $2 million, however, the team can start bringing glasses to the masses.
