Growing S'pore medtech industry eyes region

[SINGAPORE] From next year, a trip to your optician could end up saving your eyesight.

That is, if local start-up Algo Access has anything to say about it. In December last year, the firm bought licensing rights to one of the projects under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research's (A*Star) Biomedical Engineering Programme (BEP).

Dubbed the automatic glaucoma diagnosis and its genetic association study through medical image informatics (AGLAIA) project, the tool is used to screen for glaucoma - an eye disease that can result in blindness in advanced cases - and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Algo Access eventually hopes to use the tool to screen for diabetes as well.

The image processing software scans and analyses a shot of a patient's retina, which can be taken at the optician's using a Fundus camera, in about…