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Cure Blindness Technologies

How to deliver care to 4.5 billion people? 

At Cure Blindness Technologies we strive to establish truly accessible healthcare infrastructure and answer this question.

75-5749 Kalawa Street

Kailua Kona, HI 96740

Doctor Daphne

Automatically analyze both eyes. Detect disease. And provide essential treatments. Daphne is a comprehensive medical clinic in the palm of your hand.

Immediate Results.
Ergonomic Design.

Easy-to-Use

Daphne makes competent care easy. Fully automatic analyses, indicated abnormalities, and treatment recommendations are designed for everyone, including children and minimally trained personnel.

Immediate Results

Make use of HD retinal images, higher order refraction, intra-ocular pressure, auto documentation, treatment management, and patient identification. All in real-time allowing remote supervision.

Affordable

Usage based models ensure Daphne remains affordable for a basic $1 per day. Our goals are for highest clinical standards to be widely accessible.

Clinical Standards​

Daphne replaces standard, often desktop-mounted, equipment such as retinal imagers and autorefractors with at least equal accuracy and reliability.

Daphne replaces 30 million ophthalmoscopes.

Pocket-Size

A clinic full of medical equipment in the palm of your hand. Take Daphne into the field, serve people in busy streets, or patients at home.

Automatic eye acquisition, patient identification and management allow delegated care, streamlined triage, and reduced workloads.

Designed with reliability in mind, Daphne avoids upfront cost and complexity, making effective care convenient and allowing swift consultations. 

Immediate results and guided treatment recommendations are accessible outside of fully staffed clinics for practical field application.

Why
is Daphne
so important?

Three pressing observations:

Though many are unaware,

healthcare is a scarce good.

For a majority of the world population routine check ups, quality care, and essential medicines are inaccessible.

As a consequence, millions suffer preventable and treatable disease, further causing immense societal and economical burden.

Good care is too expensive.

1 WHO & World Bank (2017)

2 WHO (2023)

3 MSF (2023)

Medical staff is spread thin.

Treatable
disease are widespread.

WHO & World Bank (2017)

The Lancet (2021)

Clearly (2016)

International Diabetes Federation (2021)

At present we face a shortage of 15 million healthcare workers globally.

Only 3.7 ophthalmologists per million population serve in low-income countries. That is less than 5% of the density in high-income countries.

Exemplary are 200,000 unadministered Nigerian drug shops. These shops are the primary and dominant local source of healthcare despite their lack of clinical standards and licensing. Only 2,600 pharmacies are officially recognized.

Healthcare systems are similarly strained in the developed world. Aging populations, already high costs, and limited resources add additional burdens.

In the US, blindness is among the top ten disabilities and "expected to double by 2050."​

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“100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty each year because of healthcare costs.”

Healthcare infrastructure as we know it is too often incredibly inefficient. Most first-rate clinical equipment is not designed to serve larger populations. It is expensive, overreliant on highly skilled technicians, and bound to physical office spaces.

Even cheap equivalents for a retinal imager ($9,000 - $85,000), tonometer ($2,000 - $10,000), and autorefractor ($1,500 - $33,500) cost thousands in mere acquisition.

Bottlenecks are felt on many levels, also established clinics. Especially affected, though, are remote communities. Doctors Without Borders literally fly out staff and machinery to help where possible.

"Vision impairment poses an enormous global financial burden, with the annual global cost of productivity estimated to be US$ 411 billion."

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At least half of the world’s population cannot obtain essential health services."

An observation with many real-life consequences.

Nearly half the Chinese population (~720 million) have uncorrected sight issues because they can't get an examination. 90% just need glasses.

In fact, 2.5 billion people, a third of the world population, need eyeglasses, but don't have any.  More than 90% of global visual impairment is avoidable.

Diabetes is a noteworthy example. It is the world’s fastest growing chronic condition with 537 million, over 10% of the global adult population, suffering from this fatal, yet treatable, disease. Even worse, 50% are undiagnosed. In the US diabetes is the leading cause for permanent blindness.

These are but a few examples of the global need for better care.

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Not to see

devastates.

Help us bring medical competency and clinical capability to millions in need. 
 
Support our vision of quality care. Become a development partner. Empower entire communities. Or work with Daphne yourself. 

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