Retina-AI Health, Inc. raises $5.2m for diabetes detection

Retina-AI Health Inc., has raised $5.2 million in Series A financing for AI screening of diabetic retinopathy. According to the founder and CEO, Dr. Stephen Odaibo, a Nigerian-born Neuroscientist, Physicist, Retina specialist, computer scientist, and full-stack AI engineer, the funds will be used to take the company’s retina-based AI detection technology through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The capital raise was from private investors, mostly physicians and business titans such as Bill Smith, Founder of Shipt (acquired by Target in 2018)

According to RETINA-AI Health, Inc., the retina contains information about the entire body and many diseases can be diagnosed simply by looking in the retina.

There are too few retina specialists, ophthalmologists, and optometrists in the world to see the billions of patients who need to be seen, therefore, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is needed. AI is able to reach many more patients, and is as good as human experts at detecting several of the diseases that can be seen in the retina.

RETINA-AI Health, Inc. has developed artificial intelligence technology to enable the diabetic retinal exam to be done in the primary care setting. The company’s HUMMINGBIRD DR 100™ is a cloud-based AI detector of diabetic retinopathy which interprets the retinal image and returns a PDF report within a few seconds.

The company is focused on building artificial intelligence to improve healthcare outcomes of prevalent diseases such as diabetes. More broadly, the company develops and deploys retina-based AI for detection of disease at scale.

Diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs either when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin or when the body cannot effectively use the insulin it produces. According to the World Health Organisation, 422 million people worldwide have diabetes, the majority living in low-and middle-income countries, and 1.6 million deaths are directly attributed to diabetes each year