Continuing the glasses theme in the Wearables Tourney, a company with a potential color blind treatment EnChroma faces a cure for creating human pin cushion and improving patient safety that is Evena Medical’s Eyes-On-Glasses technology, which seeks to help medical professionals identify good veins.
EnChroma is really solving a quality of life problem. Developed by a group of Berkeley engineers it claims its smart “Cx Explorer” glasses wearers experience up to a 30 percent improvement in their ability to identify colors and a 70 percent improvement in color discrimination.
I thought color blindness is supposed to be rare, affecting 8 percent of men who are born with the condition. Still, I took color blind test on its website and was diagnosed with a “mild” form of Deuteranomaly. Maybe I was tired or maybe it’s not in the company’s interest to give a perfect score. It is trying to sell glasses for hundreds of dollars and damn, they are stylish. But despite the fact that it doesn’t claim to be official, the test is a bit questionable. If this were NCCAA basketball, Evena would be at the free throw line.
Still the testimonials are thrilling to read. A New York Times writer who suffers from a form of color blindness was thrilled with the results but the asking price put him off.
Evena’s Eyes-On-Glasses device uses multi-spectral 3D imaging to show veins beneath the skin. Two digital cameras transmit the images wirelessly through Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or 3G connectivity. Video or images collected using the glasses can be transmitted remotely.
The patient safety factor is definitely in Evena’s favor. It claims it can reduce the multiple attempts to locate and access veins which happens 40 percent of the time that medical staff insert an IV.
Evena Medical’s eyewear is more likely to influence patients lives, or at least the quality of it, but it also has the patient safety angle in its favor. Speaking as someone with “baby veins,” I would have rejoiced at the idea of a device that would prevent me from becoming pricked repeatedly during a blood test. On the other hand, a phlebotomist’s low tech solution to use a blood pressure cuff was really effective. Of course, that’s often not a practical consideration if the person has really bad veins or has other complications.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Winner: Evena Medical
Why? Improving quality of life is no small thing. But the ability or the potential to make hospitals more efficient and reducing medical errors gets Evena Medical more points. There is also the customer satisfaction component that hospitals need to worry about since it can affect reimbursement.
