Katie Solley
Title: Co-founder and CEO, Eyedea Medical Inc.
Age: 25
The vast majority of cases of corneal blindness are avoidable or treatable. The technology for reversing blindness exists, but conditions like lack of resources or lack of training cause millions of people worldwide to remain waiting for a transplant. It’s a problem that struck Katie Solley as “unacceptable and pretty devastating.”
Solley’s venture, Eyedea Medical Inc., was spun out of Johns Hopkins and is developing tools that can reduce costs and improve the capacity and effectiveness of eye banks and corneal surgeons around the world. The company has raised over $350,000 in non-dilutive funding to date, and recently launched paid pilots with early customers for its first product, a preparation device for a graft procedure called Descemet’s Membrane Endothelial Keratoplasty (DMEK).
Solley and her co-founders, Dr. Kunal Parikh and Dr. Sudeep Pramanik, are driven in their work with Eyedea to enable access to high-quality health care to vulnerable communities, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, she said.
This is your first venture. How and why did you decide to try and build a new business?
In the [Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design] program at Johns Hopkins University, the encouragement to start a company after graduation was always present. Towards the end of my first year in graduate school, I realized that we truly had found an unmet clinical need that could change the lives of many people. With the mentorship and the confidence from Kunal Parikh, I thought I would likely not get another chance to see my work through in this way, so we both decided to take the leap and try to ensure that our work and progress translated to clinical impact.
What has been the most challenging part of building your venture? What has been most rewarding?
Some of the most challenging and rewarding parts of building Eyedea Medical have been around fundraising. Applying to dozens of grants and working long hours to write and prepare the appropriate materials only to not receive the grant can be very painstaking. On the other hand, receiving grants and winning awards is an amazing feeling. Our hard work is paying off and other stakeholders in the industry believe that the venture has merit and clinical potential. The other most rewarding part of starting Eyedea Medical is that our products really do have the potential to impact patients and help reverse blindness around the world.
What keeps you motivated to continue working on the business?
First and foremost, I love my job. As an engineer by training, we are taught to problem solve and think through different creative ways to achieve goals. Working on patents, operations, marketing strategies and defining impact objectives are all just different ways to solve puzzles and problems. At the end of the day, I want to have an impact and help reverse blindness in patients. There are over 15 million people waiting for a corneal transplant around the world despite corneal blindness being 95% treatable or preventable. That drives everyone on our team to keep pushing to create innovative and affordable medical devices that can alleviate corneal blindness.
Eyedea is a member of the LaunchPort accelerator in Port Covington. How has that program helped the company progress? Do you expect the company will stay in Baltimore as it grows?
We will definitely stay in Baltimore as the company grows. I just bought a house here in Hampden and love the city. LaunchPort is doing a great job in growing the resources and network of the medical device ecosystem in Baltimore, so I am excited to be a part of that growth. LaunchPort is working to ensure that companies have access to the appropriate resources and financing, and that they can scale through manufacturing. Working alongside other medical device companies is a great environment to be in. Having a state-of-the-art facility to showcase to partners and investors also helps build credibility and allows us to focus on the important aspects of our businesses.
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