PARIS– Tilak Healthcare, a pioneer and leading player in the field of ophthalmological digital health, has raised €10 million in a funding round led by Elaia and Cap Horn. They were joined by long-standing investors iBionext and SWEN Capital Partners, along with Théa (flagship of the French ophthalmology industry), Adelie and several renowned ophthalmologists and business angels including Yann Fleureau (co-founder of Cardiologs). This new funding round brings Tilak Healthcare’s total funding to €22 million since it was founded within the iBionext ecosystem in 2016.
The funds will be used to accelerate the roll-out of OdySight in France and abroad, and to develop new solutions for other medical conditions. OdySight is the first remote monitoring system for ophthalmic conditions combined with a gaming interface designed to encourage consistent patient use. It is financed by the French social security system under the government’s ‘Article 51’ scheme for experimental technologies.
The investment by Théa, Europe’s leading independent ophthalmology laboratory, emphasises OdySight’s value and importance for visual health applications. Tilak Healthcare and Théa’s extended collaboration will deploy OdySight with the goal to develop new opportunities for healthcare, for both patients and healthcare professionals.
According to the World Health Organization, 3.4 billion people around the world will be affected by visual impairment by 2030. For many of those impacted, such visual ailments will have either not been addressed by medical care or could have been avoided. Tilak Healthcare developed OdySight ((CE marked as a Class I medical device) in response to this need: it is the first solution to combine a medical device with a mobile video game intended to monitor age-related vision impairments remotely. In Europe, since OdySight was first launched, it has already improved the care of 12,000 patients suffering from retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy, allowing ophthalmologists to monitor patients’ visual acuity in real time. Tilak’s investment in telemedicine, which the French government covers financially, has created a sustainable business model that puts Tilak on the path to achieve profitability by 2025.
Edouard Gasser, Chairman, CEO and co-founder of Tilak Healthcare said: “We are very proud to announce this fundraising round and to welcome new investors specialising in digital technologies and healthcare, alongside our long-standing partners who have continued to place their trust in us. All our investors share our ambition of revolutionising ophthalmological care through digital technologies and video games, helping to address some of the problems all healthcare systems around the world are facing. We have recently hit key milestones in our quest to make Tilak Healthcare a global benchmark for remotely monitoring vision impairments. Visual health is one of the keys to ageing well, and we intend to apply our expertise to help people maintain their vision as best as possible.”
“We are delighted to be making this continued commitment to Tilak Healthcare. The company is establishing itself as a leading player in visual health by introducing new ways of monitoring patients with OdySight®, the first clinically proven app for monitoring chronic vision impairments remotely. Tilak has made impressive progress since we first invested,and is on track to meet the growing need for monitoring vision impairments as a result of new lifestyles and ageing populations,” explains Samantha Jérusalmy, Partner at Elaia.
Her view is shared by Gaston Vasseur, Investment Manager at Caphorn: “We have strongly believed in digital therapies, which represent a real solution to the challenges faced by our healthcare systems. By showing OdySight’s clinical utility in monitoring chronic eye disorders, Tilak Healthcare is becoming the benchmark solution in its market and is shifting the focus in ophthalmology from cure to prevention. We are delighted to provide financial support to this pioneering player in remote monitoring, whose business model has proven momentum, with a 500% increase in recurring revenue between 2022 and 2023.”
“This funding, set against a tough economic backdrop, shows Tilak Healthcare’s ability to attract a complementary set of leading investors to help it transform the care of patients suffering from chronic eye disorders such as AMD,” said Alexia Perouse from iBionext.
Fabrice Mercier, Alliance Manager at Théa, added: “Théa is looking forward to increasing its support to Tilak Healthcare, continuing our successful collaboration in launching OdySight in France. This commitment emphasises our aim of pursuing therapeutic advances that meet the needs of both patients and healthcare professionals. At Théa, we are fully committed to fostering innovation in collaboration with all participants in the healthcare ecosystem, with the ambition of eliminating avoidable blindness and proposing solutions that improve the quality of life of people living with eye disorders.”
Guided by Prof. José-Alain Sahel, Founder of France’s Institut de la Vision and Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and by the iBionext team, and headed by Edouard Gasser, Chair, CEO and co-founder of Tilak Healthcare and former studio manager at Gameloft, the team consists of experts with more than three decades of experience in designing video games as well as highly experienced, world-renowned scientists. This unique blend of complementary skills helps Tilak create engaging solutions for patients while meeting the rigorous clinical demands of medics.
