Elisar AVA

Elisar takes a non-eyecare centric approach to solving eyecare challenges by leveraging 21st century technologies from a range of industries. They aim to use these technologies to drive down testing costs and take testing from big hospitals to the patients.?

In India, an estimated 12 million people suffer from Glaucoma. And to top it off, 90% of the cases go undetected. ?

This happens simply because eyecare testing is inaccessible and unaffordable. Unaffordable and inaccessible because the equipment is mostly imported and expensive and therefore locked in big city hospitals. ?

Glaucoma, if untreated, can lead to blindness and affect the patient's lifestyle, family and economic prospects.?

Elisar tasked us with designing the AVA- Advanced Vision Analyzer to free diagnostics from confines of the city hospitals. And take it where patients needed it the most, corner clinics or their homes.?To do that, AVA had to be low cost, portable, easy to set up and operable by semi-skilled technicians.?

They needed a partner that could work like an in-house team, roll with the changes that come in every ambitious?program at any stage. A partner whose experience spanned both tech and medical device domains. And experienced in building devices where none existed.?

Eyecare should be accessible to everyone, everywhere!

Project Insights:?

As the device was going to be first in class, it was important that it,?

1. Looked familiar to both patients and technicians to put them at ease.?
2. Robust enough to survive vibrations, in package drops that could happen.?
3. Easy to set up and use as tests could be done either in clinics or patients’ homes.?

• Make it Cool:?

VR (Virtual Reality) glasses had just taken off in India. People used them for entertainment during long train or bus journeys. The exact modes of transport the target users were familiar with. And this approach came with immense benefits. Since Elisar was free of legacy hardware, we could build the AVA like a VR headset, using the mobile phone’s processing power to run the diagnostics. And the form factor would make it approachable for the patients.?

• Lightweight Body, Heavyweight Lifting:?

The AVA requires the patient to wear it while testing. To minimize discomfort, it had to be as light as possible. No easy task, as above the existing parts of a VR Headset, it needed dedicated hardware to account for the patients' eye power and scan the eyes for Glaucoma signs. We balanced AVA’s weights to ergonomic comfort levels?to ensure it felt light while doing its heavyweight processing.?

• Precisely Tough:?

AVA had to be mobile to fulfill its promise. And that meant being moved from place to place on two wheelers, in a backpack and on Indian roads. We engineered AVA to ensure that the complex assemblies handled rough use and precise reporting with equal ease.?

• Any colour as long as its Black:?

Glaucoma testing traditionally requires a dark room. Now this was never going to happen when the testing moved from hospitals to the patients’ homes. We designed AVA to be dark to signify the deep tech as well as prevent light bleeds that could affect the result quality.?

• In for the Long Haul:?

While we designed the AVA to be built around a mobile phone, we had no control on how long that model would be available. We built in subsystems that would allow Elisar to switch to a newer model should the older ones become obsolete.?

?

Key Tasks Accomplished?

• Concept Development?
• Enclosure Design?
• Prototype Design?
• Materials Selection?
• Design for Manufacturing?
• Tolerance Analysis?
• Prototype Liaison?
• Postproduction support?
• Marketing support?