Date: Oct 02, 2012 Author: Dan Mayfield Source: bizjournals (
click here to go to the source)
From diabetes to high blood pressure, before a person notices symptoms, Peter Soliz says, his medical imaging device and software can spot problems just by screening the eye.
Soliz is the president and CEO of VisionQuest Biomedical, which received a $1.2 million grant last week from the National Eye Institute to test its diabetic retinopathy screening system and its DR Risk Analyzer Software.
Soliz said Monday that the new grant will let the company work in 15 clinics in New Mexico and Texas to test the company's retinal screening technology. The company jointly owns the patent for the software that detects the problems with the University of New Mexico's Department of Engineering and Computer Engineering.
"We're at the clinical trial stage and we're going to the FDA later this year," Soliz said. "We're building a framework of screening sites."
Soliz said the company's medical imaging devices peer into a retina and can spot a variety of diseases quickly and easily. The software measures the "wiggliness" of retinal blood vessels. The smoother the vessel, the healthier the person.
"We've screened 8,000 plus people. We're finding everything from cardiovascular diseases to diabetes. The blood vessels get wiggly, and we can tell if they have chronic hypertension just by looking at the eyes."
Soliz started VisionQuest in 2007 to test the effectiveness of these new technologies for early detection of ocular disease. The focus is on low-cost, portable imaging technology for use in screening of high-risk populations for glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and age-related macular degeneration. The company has received more than $8 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health, Soliz said. The company has 18 employees, nine of whom have Ph.Ds.
The company is hoping to have FDA approval for the device in 2013.
"Then, we're hoping some big gorilla will buy it," he said.
