Therapeutic Breakthrough Redefines Gold Standard: Juehua Medical's Digital Brain-Vision Therapy Gains Certification, Poised to Transform a $100B Market

On February 10, 2022, Juehua Medical's "Amblyopia Visual Function Software" was approved for an NMPA Class II medical device registration certificate! This product has obtained the first registration certificate resulting from the technology transfer of iAVT (Individualized Adaptive Visual Function Training) from two of the world’s leading visual brain science laboratories.

What is iAVT Technology? How Does It Empower Brain Vision Digital Therapy? What Waves Will the Approved Product Bring to the Billion-Dollar Amblyopia Treatment Market? To Find Answers to These Questions, VCBeat Interviewed Diao Qingsong, Co-Founder and CEO of Juehua Medical.

Amblyopia, also known as lazy eye, is a long-term visual impairment caused by defects in the development of the nervous system. Amblyopia is the most common cause of visual impairment in children, with an incidence rate as high as 3%.

Current treatments for amblyopia mainly include optical correction, occlusion therapy, and optical pharmacological therapy, which primarily work by providing a clear retinal image and forcing the patient to use the amblyopic eye to improve vision. Among these, occlusion therapy has been used for over 200 years, and currently, more than 90% of ophthalmologists still consider it as the first-line treatment option.

However, in actual treatment, the occlusion therapy has a longer treatment cycle, usually lasting 3-5 years, and children's compliance is poor, making it difficult to persist. In addition, occlusion may also affect the development and improvement of children's advanced visual functions such as stereopsis and motion vision. For older children and adults with amblyopia, the efficacy is minimal.

Overall, traditional amblyopia treatment methods are slow to take effect, have poor outcomes, long cycles, and offer a subpar experience. These factors have led to a surge in demand for digital amblyopia treatment strategies.

Digital therapeutics, as an innovative and effective solution, can achieve full-course and follow-up management for children with amblyopia. It integrates patient training management, electronic medical record management, and performance management of amblyopia projects for medical staff, which helps improve the work efficiency of medical personnel.

For Juehua Medical, the advantages of digital therapeutics in amblyopia treatment are precision, personalization, and intelligence.Diao Qingsong stated: "The essence of digital therapeutics should be serious medical treatment, and the core of serious medical treatment is efficacy."。”

Clinical data show that, compared with the "gold standard" occlusion therapy's effect of improving one line on the vision chart after 120 hours of treatment and two lines after three months of treatment,Patients using Juehua Medical's "Orthoptic Element" amblyopia product for 4-5 hours (10 training sessions over 5 days, each lasting 20-30 minutes) can experience an average improvement of more than 2 lines in their vision. In terms of effectiveness, this result significantly surpasses the "gold standard" occlusion therapy. The training sessions can also be flexibly scheduled, with visible effects as early as five days (twice daily).

"When discussing the issue of compliance, Diao Qingsong stated: 'The core of the compliance problem with traditional methods is the need for long-term continuous use. However, if a condition can be cured quickly in a short period, the impact of compliance becomes negligible. If rapid effectiveness can be achieved, it will also encourage patients to continue using the treatment, reducing the impact of compliance.'"

Juehua Medical Co-Founder and CEO QingSong Diao

"In addition, Juehua Medical's products fully consider usability issues in the design process, from hardware and software to algorithms. Our products can support normal use by children as young as three years old."We pursue scientific and interesting training, not gamified methods."Because the corresponding areas of the game in the brain and the amblyopia visual system that needs to be repaired are not the same. To some extent, a purely gamified approach may even interfere with the training effect." He added.

Short treatment course, quick effect, effective for both adult and children's amblyopia, scientific and interesting, with no risk of game addiction… All of this is inseparable from Juehua Medical's original core iAVT (Individualized Adaptive Visual Function Training) technology.

The global objective medical expert ranking system Expertscape shows that the main sources of current amblyopia basic research 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.

Professor Zhonglin Lu, Co-founder and Global Chief Scientific Advisor of Juehua Medical, is a former professor at Ohio State University. He is a top expert in the fields of visual perception and brain science learning training, one of the five founders of the Global Amblyopia Translational Research Consortium, and a major contributor to the advancement of visual training theoretical research worldwide.Juehua Medical's core technology iAVT is derived from nearly 20 years of research achievements by Professor Lü Zhonglin and Professor Huang Changbing.

Professor Zhonglin Lu, Co-founder and Global Chief Scientific Advisor of Juehua Medical

Dao QingSong introduced, iAVT, or Individualized Adaptive Visual Training technology, is significant in the rehabilitation treatment of visual perception functions.Fast-acting, significant effects, long-lastingCharacteristics such asThe core lies in personalization and adaptability.

Personalization: The characteristics and degree of visual function impairment vary among individuals with amblyopia, such as visual acuity loss, stereopsis loss, and motion perception loss. On the other hand, the mechanisms of amblyopia damage may also differ from person to person, such as signal quality issues in the amblyopic eye and suppression issues by the dominant eye.

Therefore, patients with amblyopia need a set of personalized training programs. Juehua Medical first systematically measures and evaluates each patient through its visual perception function detection and assessment system, clarifying the damage characteristics, extent, and mechanisms of amblyopia onset. Based on this, a personalized visual perception function training treatment plan is developed, including different starting points, training tasks, or combinations.

Adaptive: As patients undergo training, their vision will gradually improve, so the initial training parameters need to be adjusted accordingly. The adaptive algorithm will modify the training parameters in real time based on the patient's performance during the training process, ensuring that the training remains within an effective learning range that is appropriately challenging.

After each training session, the system will provide a corresponding completion score and synchronize it with parents and doctors. A low score will trigger an early warning mechanism, thereby forming a comprehensive training treatment effect guarantee system.

When asked why having original core technology is more disruptive in the current market with a plethora of amblyopia treatment products emerging, Diao Qingsong stated"Occlusion therapy has been considered the 'gold standard' for amblyopia treatment since its inception and has been used for over 200 years. During this time, scientists and medical experts worldwide have continuously explored and researched new methods and technologies to achieve faster and more effective disease treatment."

"Over the past 30 years, the scientific community has made substantial breakthroughs, particularly in major global basic research laboratories focusing on amblyopia. Numerous scientific achievements have emerged, revolutionizing the theoretical and technical foundations of amblyopia research. Internationally, many innovative amblyopia products are primarily direct outcomes of technologies from these major laboratories, 'originating from prestigious sources.' The ultimate question is whether they possess disruptive potential,The effect is the best answer.." Said Diao Qingsong.

The ophthalmology market has always been praised as a golden track. With the advent of the electronic age, consumption upgrade, high-end technology updates, and other factors, optometry services focusing on myopia prevention and control, dry eye diagnosis and treatment, diabetic retinopathy screening, and strabismus and amblyopia training are becoming new industry trends.

Taking the amblyopia market as an example, the incidence of amblyopia is 3%. China currently has more than 40 million amblyopia patients, including 12 million children. The market size for pediatric amblyopia treatment alone can reach hundreds of billions.

In recent years, a group of emerging companies specializing in the rapid development of amblyopia treatments have emerged on the international market, such as Amblyotech (acquired by Novartis), Novasight (Israel), and Luminopia (USA), drawing global attention. The solution these companies are collectively targeting is digital therapeutics.

Since its establishment in 2016, Juehua Medical has been committed to becoming a global leading provider of "digital medicine" for the entire life cycle of visual health.

In addition to amblyopia treatment, based on visual brain science iAVT technology,Juehua Medical has also developed a range of digital therapy products that integrate detection, monitoring, treatment, and prediction for full-lifecycle visual health issues, including visual field defects, low vision (such as cataracts), myopia, astigmatism, presbyopia, and infant visual and cognitive assessment and intervention. Additionally, they offer a comprehensive service model covering all scenarios from professional medical institutions to home and individual users.。

Currently, Juehua Medical has established extensive and in-depth cooperation with many well-known universities and research institutions at home and abroad, including the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ohio State University in the United States, China National Institute of Standardization, Zhongshan School of Medicine at Sun Yat-sen University, Wenzhou Medical University, as well as hospitals such as Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center of Sun Yat-sen University, Eye Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Beijing Tongren Hospital affiliated to Capital Medical University, and Aier Eye Hospital.

In the near future, Juehua Medical will continue to refine its product innovation by focusing on data accumulation, algorithm optimization, and norm iteration, while also continuing to promote the development of industry technical standards, expert consensus, and clinical guidelines.

In addition, after the amblyopia treatment product received NMPA medical device certification this time, Juehua Medical will also focus on the construction of medical market capabilities, including team building, system construction, and market service.

On January 30, the "14th Five-Year Plan for Digital Health in Hainan Province" included "exploring the pilot use of digital therapeutics" as one of the main tasks for digital health development in Hainan Province during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. This marks the first time that digital therapeutics have been included in a provincial plan, gaining attention and promotion at the provincial level.

In this regard, Diao Qingsong stated："We are very pleased to see the introduction of the policy. Especially, the essence of the change in China's current medical policies is to encourage innovation, promote more effective and safer products, and serve clinical patients more quickly. National policies also reflect a balance between efficiency and fairness."In clinical practice, efficacy is the greatest efficiency.."The better the efficacy and the higher the efficiency, the more people can be served per unit of time. Allowing all common people to enjoy high-quality products or services is an embodiment of fairness."

When talking about the future development trends of digital therapeutics, Diao Qingsong believes: It is still in the initial stage at present. The general trend is good, but there are also some problems that need to be solved urgently. There are several major factors that can be considered, including...Whether there is a qualitative breakthrough in underlying application technology, chip technology and core algorithms, etc.;Secondly, the research on the pathogenesis of related diseases, and whether the treatment methods have reached the point of renewal and iteration.For example, the "gold standard" for amblyopia treatment, occlusion, has been used for over 200 years.Thirdly, the overall support and investment of the entire country and society in digital therapeutics and related standardsWhether it can be followed up;Finally, the overall concept and cognitive change in clinical practiceWhether it can be promoted.

Juehua Medical believes that not only ophthalmic digital therapeutics, but in fact, the overall digital therapeutics of the future should not only be characterized by digitization, gamification, networking, or remote accessibility. With the evolution of future technologies and the standardization of the entire industry...Digital therapy should develop towards precision and standardization in treatment, always focusing on efficacy as its core, which is the ultimate value of digital therapy.。

"Now we can see that policy support both in and outside China is gradually emerging, and the participation of some international pharmaceutical giants is also driving digital therapeutics forward. China's visual health issues are extensive and affect a large population, with sufficient market capacity, requiring more enterprises to pay attention and promote collectively, so that the entire ecosystem will continue to improve."Juehua Medical always focuses on the mission of using brain technology to solve visual function health problems, enabling people to see more clearly, comfortably, and enduringly.." Diao Qingsong said.