i-Onion: innovation to diagnose dry eye disease

10 de July de 2023

The lack of quantitative tools to diagnose dry eye syndrome is a major healthcare problem and i-Onion's promoters from the Instituto de Neurociencias perceived the opportunity to apply innovation to one of their research lines.

Lágrima, a project led by Dr. Juana Gallar and Dr. Carlos Belmonte, has been one of the first innovation projects of the IN’s innovation office (IN.Pulse) in the year of its launch, 2018. Its development was driven during 2019 and 2020, thanks to public grants from the Agencia Valenciana de Innovación (AVI), and resulted in a patent and the first prototypes for human testing.

Photo: Product i-Onion

The Lágrima project aimed to obtain a useful tool for a more accurate diagnosis of the dry eye syndromes disease, which affects around 100 million people worldwide. Its promoters realized that the lack of quantitative tools was a major problem in the diagnosis of this disease, and it was their window of opportunity for innovation with one of their lines of research.

Lágrima is an example of collaboration between researchers from the Instituto de Neurociencias CSIC-UMH), the Instituto Tecnológico de Biomecánica of Valencia, and the companies La Siesta Technologies and Grupo Idea, all under the coordination of the IN.Pulse team.

Today, this project has become the global spin-off Tearful. That innovation is now a marketable product called i-Onion: the only available device in the market for measuring the eye’s maximum tear flow, facilitating the diagnosis of dry eye syndrome.

Tearful has already set up alliances with some world's leading ophthalmological institutions, such as the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, and its device i-Onion is being commercially tested in the United States, Europe and Asia, as priority markets.

To develop its business plan Tearful has already closed two investment rounds, which multiplied by 10 its value and the investment cost of its promoters. These investments came from national investors and the next steps are focused on engaging investors in the United States. This will enable entering the US market, through a local investor, and obtain economic resources to scale-up the industrialization and commercialization processes.

Diego Belmonte, CEO of Tearful, indicates that one of the keys to success is undoubtedly the creation of a reliable work team to develop and upgrade the prototype, and the business around the innovation. By doing so, researchers do not need not step out of their scientific roles. This facilitates the innovation process for the researchers, since they can remain in their area of expertise.