Spect

Date Awarded: August 25, 2023
Amount: $475,000.00

Spect’s mission is to prevent blindness through the early detection of eye diseases and to establish a platform for health care data analytics. The eye serves as a key predictor not only of eye diseases but of whole-body diseases such as stroke, Parkinson’s, and more. Spect’s telemedicine platform empowers medical assistants to easily capture retinal images and receive a diagnostic report. Their solution fills a critical health care gap for patients and clinics while delivering best-in-class service and financial outcomes.

Spect’s enterprise solution is the only vertically integrated platform that addresses all the pain points associated with conventional retinal eye exams. With their portable retinal camera, diabetic retinopathy screenings and other retinal eye exams can now be conducted anywhere using existing medical staff, eliminating the need to refer the patient to another specialist.

Retinal eye exams can be performed in a clinic or the patient’s home. The Spect retinal camera is easy to use, portable, and seamlessly integrates into clinical workflows. Existing medical staff can learn to use the Spect solution in under 15 minutes with a 95% success rate.

Spect was founded in 2017 by a trio affiliated with Stanford University: Ankur Gupta, MD, MS, an eye surgeon at the medical school; Theodore Leng, MD, MS, director of clinical and translational research and the director of ophthalmic diagnostics at the school’s department of ophthalmology; and engineer and entrepreneur Michael Leung, MS.