ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Samsara Vision is the only company offering a telescopic implant that restores 3-4 lines of vision lost in patients with late-stage age-related macular degeneration.
In its late stages, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of irreversible vision loss and legal blindness in people over the age of 65, causes deterioration of a person’s central vision. When an AMD patient looks ahead, they see a blind spot. People with the condition lose the ability to see the faces of their loved ones. Some AMD patients are afraid to walk because they can’t see their feet on the ground. This disability robs a person of independence and colors their emotional and mental outlook. Imagine if baseball was your passion, but you could no longer see the game.
Such a sports fan was helped by a vision implant called IMT (implantable miniature telescope) developed by VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies. The implant was extremely effective at restoring sight with its high-precision wide-angle micro-optic, but the technology wasn’t widely adopted because of its procedural drawbacks. Seeing a large unmet clinical need in end-stage AMD, which affects 11-15 million people worldwide, Innovatus Capital Partners stepped in to acquire the technology and back the business with a start-up approach to help it realize its full potential.
In 2020, Samsara Vision was born, its name deriving from a Sanskrit word describing a path to rebirth and growth.
