Saccade Diagnostics, a spin-out from Aberdeen University, has secured a grant worth £1.4m ($2.19m) to fuel research into eye movement abnormalities diagnosing psychiatric disorders.
The funding was provided by charity investor Wellcome Trust through its Challenge Fund, co-operated with the Department of Health. It will be used to support a collaboration between Saccade and research teams at Aberdeen and Edinburgh University.
Saccade’s technology builds on previous research that indicates people with psychiatric disorders have eye movement abnormalities. However, until now, it has been thought that the eye movements are neither sensitive nor specific enough to be useful in diagnosis.
Mental health diagnosis is also an underserved area, where conditions such as schizophrenia or bi-polar are normally diagnosed through the observation of patient symptoms, behaviour, and medical history. This can cause misdiagnosis and patients receiving the wrong care.
Saccade is building on Aberdeen research that found that eye movement recordings taken by a high performance camera as a patient watches pictures can be extremely effective at making the correct diagnosis. The new funding will allow the company to conduct a wider trial on patients with bi-polar, schizophrenia, and depression, and trial other conditions like borderline personality and obsessive compulsive disorders.
Madhu Nair, CEO and co-founder of Saccade Diagnostics, said: “This is a tremendous endorsement of our company and the work we are doing from the world’s biggest medical research charity. The technology should improve patient wellbeing, satisfy an enormous unmet need and reduce health care costs worldwide.”
