Juehua Medical Secures Tens of Millions in Angel Funding to Advance Brain Science-Based Digital Therapeutics for Visual Health

Editor's Note: This article comes from 36Kr, authored by Dun Yuting, and VCBeat has been authorized to reprint it.

Today, Juehua Medical, a brain technology medical company, has completed an angel round of financing worth tens of millions of yuan. The investor is Linear Capital, and Qidian Capital served as the financial advisor for this round of financing. This round of financing will be used for product iteration, clinical data accumulation, and team building.

Juehua Medical is a brain technology medical company focused on the visual health field, specializing in the research and development of visual function detection and enhancement technologies based on brain science principles. It also engages in the R&D, production, and sales of related "digital medicine" products, as well as providing subsequent data mining and technical services.

Juehua Medical Co-founder and CEO QingSong Diao mentioned that he and another co-founder, ChangBing Huang, are university classmates. He has more than twenty years of commercialization experience in the medical field, while the latter has over two decades of scientific research accumulation. Together, they founded Juehua Medical. Additionally, the team has invited Professor ZhongLin Lu, an internationally renowned expert in visual perception, brain science, and learning training, to serve as the company's Chief Scientific Advisor. It is reported that ChangBing Huang is currently a researcher at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and ZhongLin Lu is a professor at Shanghai New York University and New York University. Over the past 20-plus years, they have been continuously dedicated to the research of visual neuroscience.

It is reported that,Juehua Medical has cooperatively developed and established the iAVT (Individualized Adaptive Visual Function Training) core technology system, and has basically completed its global patent layout.Diao Qingsong introduced that the iAVT technology is divided into four major technical modules: precision detection technology, personalized program formulation technology, adaptive training technology, and efficacy assurance technology. These involve conducting precise visual function assessments for each patient or individual to identify functional impairment targets. Based on the similarities and differences in damage mechanisms, specific visual training programs are provided and dynamically adjusted throughout the treatment process to ensure the final therapeutic effect.

In the future, the company will also expand its product pipelines to include visual field defects (including damage to the brain's optic nerve center, glaucoma, etc.) and low vision (including cataracts, etc.), covering a "digital medicine" product line that integrates visual health testing, monitoring, prediction, treatment, rehabilitation, and prevention. 

Diao Qingsong emphasized,The above-mentioned "digital medicine" falls within the scope of digital therapeutics but has clear requirements for treatment courses, active ingredients, dosages, efficacy, and indications.。

According to him, the company's amblyopia treatment product received approval for a Class II medical device registration certificate from the National Medical Products Administration in the first quarter of 2022. It is currently conducting "head-to-head" clinical research at institutions such as the Eye Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University and the Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center, comparing against the gold standard for amblyopia treatment, "patching therapy." The aim is to contribute to the development of new expert consensus and industry standards, promoting advancements in clinical treatment guidelines.

As for the exploration of commercialization, given that the "digital drug" for amblyopia is an entirely new category, the company plans to proceed as follows:First, the business model adopts the to H to C model; secondly, post-marketing clinical research projects are carried out to explore and formulate innovative "digital medicine" clinical pathways in collaboration with clinical experts.。

So far, Juehua Medical's products have been recognized and adopted by users such as Wenzhou Medical University Eye Hospital, China Disabled Persons' Federation Assistive Devices Center, Huawei, and the China National Institute of Standardization. Long-term strategic partnerships have been established with some of them.

From the perspective of market demand, the importance of visual health is self-evident—vision is the primary source of sensory information for humans (>80%). However, the population suffering from visual health issues is enormous. According to statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), visual health problems have become one of the three major diseases seriously affecting people's quality of life, alongside cancer and cardiovascular diseases. According to WHO data, more than 2.2 billion people worldwide suffer from visual impairment, with over 500 million people in China affected by various forms of visual impairment. 

Dao Qingsong introduced, "Taking amblyopia as an example, its incidence rate in China is approximately 3% (i.e., 42 million people). With a 50% treatment rate and an estimated per capita treatment cost of 0.5-1 million RMB, the amblyopia treatment market is worth over 100 billion RMB.。”

From the supply side, the current market solutions mainly focus on eye medications and surgeries, which are difficult to address many existing visual health issues. It is understood that the human visual system consists of two parts: the eye (referred to as the front end) and the brain (the visual cortex; referred to as the back end). The current clinical techniques primarily concentrate on the eye, i.e., the front end of the visual system, making it challenging to resolve many problems/diseases, such as aging or issues and conditions predominantly occurring in the back end (e.g., amblyopia). 

It is also aimed at this gap,Juehua Medical Focuses on the Backend of the Visual System (and Brain Center), integrating brain technology, visual science, ophthalmology, and artificial intelligence techniques, deeply developing and efficiently utilizing brain plasticity, precisely evaluating and effectively restoring impaired or degenerated visual functions to address critical pain points in clinical visual health needs.

It is understood that, taking amblyopia as an example, the global objective medical expert ranking system Expertscape shows that the main sources of basic research on amblyopia currently include the University of California, Berkeley, McGill University, Ohio State University, the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Wenzhou Medical University, among others.Diao Qingsong stated that, from the perspectives of data and technical certification speed in publicly published SCI papers, as well as team composition, Juehua Medical has certain advantages.。

In terms of investment logic, Zeng Yingzhe, partner of Linear Capital, stated: "The core of digital therapeutics is treatment, which is the key to transforming the entire healthcare ecosystem. The Juehua team has leveraged over 20 years of research achievements in visual neuroscience to launch the iAVT technology. This innovative approach utilizes highly efficient adaptive algorithms to develop personalized treatment plans that effectively address visual health issues, achieving globally leading efficacy data. The founding team demonstrates strong capabilities in product technology development and commercialization."