O_Oley

What it does

O_Oley is a biomedical device design for stopping the development of glaucoma. It reduces ocular stress and keeps the eye healthy by providing photo thermal stretching on the optical tissues and muscles. It improved ocular compliance and protect optics nerves.

Your inspiration

Glaucoma is an eye disease caused by intraocular pressure (IOP) damage to the optic nerve. With 3.6 million people blinded globally, glaucoma accounts for 10.7% of blindness, making it the 2nd most common ocular disease in the world. Current therapeutic approaches to reduce IOP are only available in the market for diagnosed patients. This includes draining aqueous humor secretion using eye drops or invasive surgeries. However, there are no preventative methods against glaucoma. Our team attempts to address this issue through our non-invasive, physiotherapy device that can stop the development of glaucoma in mild and pre-glaucoma patients.

How it works

To use the O_Oley device, users must first wear the device and fit the headband securely on their head. Then they can adjust and set the device to their personalised temperature and pressure profiles on the eye. Multiple visible and IR spectrums are used to increase the temperature of the ocular tissue which boosts blood circulation and induces relaxing thermal stretching of the ocular tissue. The thermoelectrics used to achieve the heating are able to reach 40 degrees Celsius to mimic the sensation of a hot towel over the users' eyes. Through these customisable adjustments, the device can actively stretch the ocular muscles of the eye, enhance tear secretion and improve ocular compliance. This reduces stress in the ocular tissues and decreases the risk of optic nerve damage caused by glaucoma.

Design process

The O_Oley device consists of a corneal tissue compliance improvement (CTCI) system and an ocular cell rejuvenation (OCR) system. ​ The CTCI system consists of a flow control module to regulate the goggle chamber pressure in order to achieve a non-contact massaging of the cornea for tissue relaxation. In addition, a heating module is used to warm up the cornea to further enhance tissue relaxation. Through the personalized cornea massaging treatment, the compliance of the corneal tissue can be increased, leading to a reduction of intra-ocular pressure.​ The OCR system consists of a combined activation light and infra-red irradiation modules. The activation light at specific wavelengths can activate the mitochondria in the optic nerve cell and energise the intra-cellular activities. Additionally, infra-red irradiation can penetrate deep into the ocular region and promote vascular circulation. The combined light treatments can strengthen the ocular tissue to withstand the intra-ocular pressure.​ The integration of the two systems is aimed to improve corneal compliance and promote the health of the ocular tissue. The personalized treatment, the O_Oley device can slow down glaucoma progression.​

How it is different

Many ocular devices on the market are aimed for relaxation, entertainment or beauty purposes. However, they lack proper attention to eye care and have shown no effects on corneal relaxation. This does not solve the issue of glaucoma development, despite how common it is in our population. Meanwhile, clinical devices to treat glaucoma can be costly, invasive due to surgery, inaccurate but, most notably, inclusive only to diagnosed patients. Our recent development of the O_Oley device has shown evidence of cornea topological change under loading and reduced eye stress to slow down glaucoma progression. Thus, compared to products already on the market, our proposed project adopts the additional advantages of having vision care therapeutic effects through controlled thermal and pressure profiles to carefully apply loading onto the cornea and sclera while being non-invasive, suitable for home use and suitable for all demographics.

Future plans

With the rise of health awareness and vision care within the global market, we hope to introduce our product to bridge the market gap between non-therapeutic comforting devices and clinical devices. With the hopes of our product becoming widely available on the market, we hope to reduce the global prevalence of glaucoma in patients by preventing it from developing at the very beginning. We are currently refining our product to make it smaller, lighter, and better in terms of efficacy. We also hope to patent our product and kickstart our start-up.

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