VUI Diagnostics

NHS problem

6.8 million ophthalmology appointments occur annually, of which 52% are unnecessary, costing the NHS up to £495 million per year in wasted outpatient referrals. Furthermore, suggesting compromised patient safety, a UK study involving 55 patients, in which an ophthalmologist had diagnosed treatable eye disease, only 9 individuals had been correctly diagnosed by their referring general practitioner. Thus, misdiagnosis of eye disease in primary care results in either a) inappropriate referral to secondary care or b) delayed/failure of referral. In the UK, both outcomes are rising, to the detriment of patient outcomes and cost-effective healthcare resourcing. The Royal National Institute for Blind People (RNIB) estimates the total cost of sight loss in the UK is approximately £4.9 billion a year, of which 80% of cases are avoidable through early diagnosis.

The solution

VUI Diagnostics helps doctors detect eye diseases earlier by providing a plug and play retinal screening device and companion software for simple, affordable and accurate retinal screening in the community.

Impact

The innovation can be translated to the bedside within the next 6 months and represent significantly better value for the NHS than the under-utilised manual ophthalmoscopes available in primary care. Performing preliminary health economic analysis for the commonest retinal pathology in the UK – diabetic retinopathy (DR) – the device has a potential incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of -1357. This is feasible due to the capability of reproducible 10 times wider field-of-view retinal imaging than the ophthalmoscope, known to independently increase the sensitivity of disease detection, at £500 per year per device.