Santen has announced two new partnerships, with both Google’s life-sciences focused sister company, Verily, and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The two separate ventures are part of a drive to expand the latest technological innovations and digital solutions in ophthalmology across Europe and globally, according to the company.
Santen has revealed that the Verily partnership will combine its specialty and technology in ophthalmology and Verily’s expertise in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and development of hardware and software-based devices, with a focus on the applications of microelectronics and scalable digital technologies to ophthalmology.
Further, the company will become the first partner in ophthalmology with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to support the WHO-ITU initiative: Be He@lthy, Be Mobile (BHBM), aiming to scale up digital health interventions in non-communicable diseases (NCDs). As part of the initiative, Santen says it aims to facilitate the expansion of this initiative into ophthalmology for the first time by providing technical insight and digital content related to vision impairment.
Last year Santen announced plans to enter into a research and development collaboration and option & licence agreement with Oxford Biomedica for development of gene therapy vectors for inherited retinal disease.
In Europe, 25 million have a form of visual impairment. Many more people – an estimated more than 70 million – have eye diseases that are in the early stages, which if left untreated will cause disabling impairment.
