Bionic Eye Market

Among all the five senses the eye has highest priority, it gives vision to us but there are millions of people whose vision is not perfect but their eyes can be corrected with the help of glasses. And millions of people who are unable to see the beauty of nature. They are perfectly blind. The glasses won’t help those who are completely blind. There is no alternative way by which they can see without eyes because the eye is the only mechanism which act in between the outer world and the brain. This means the eye can convert the visual signal to an electronic signal which is understandable by our brain. Now the technology has been given many pathways for the mankind.

As technology has improved up to an extent where the integration of engineering with the medical sciences become possible. Now a day the whole human body can be controlled using electronic chip. Visual prosthetics have been developed as a potentially very valuable device for blind and it gives a hope to live life once more. Bionic eye is a bio-electronic eye. Bionic eye replaces the functionality of a part or whole of the eye. An external camera is worn on a pair of dark glasses which sends the images in digital form to the radio receiver placed in the eye. The radio receiver is attached to the implant chip on the retina. The implantation is of two types, epiretinal implant and subretinal implant, based on whether the implant is placed on or behind the retina. Although, the artificial vision has always fascinated the biomedical engineers, there are lots of technical issues as well as medical compatibilities apart from the biological considerations.

On the basis of technology, the global bionic eye market is segmented into electronic and mechanical. The electronic segment dominated the market in 2020 and is also projected to retain its position by 2028.

ASR (Artificial Silicon Retina) and MARC (multiple unit ASR) microchip are electronic device which require power supply for their proper functioning. As in the early visual prosthetic system there is a need for implanting the battery inside of the body or place the battery near the ear and connect the power supply by the micro wires. But the ASR system eliminates the need of external power supply. It is designed in such a way that the power is taken from the incident light.

Advantage of ASR: It replaces the function of damaged photoreceptor cells in the eye.

Problem associated with the ASR prosthetics: In the dim light condition the current delivery is low, so it is insufficient to electrically activate the neurons in the retina with damaged photoreceptors. It has been observed that after experimentation and testing that the sub retinal prosthetic approach is not practical without an additional source of energy to power the implant.

Advantage of MARC system: There are many advantages of the MARC system as compared to ASR and earlier prosthetics. The problem of cell activation in the low light condition is eliminated in this system as the power is fed to the MARC system by the RF signal. There is a circuit in MARC chip for the power recovery which extracts the power from the received RF signal and used for the functioning of the chip. MARC system is compact better heat dissipation etc.

North America dominated the market for bionic eye in 2020. Health care costs in the United States have grown substantially for decades and are expected to continue to grow in the future. For the federal government, rising health care costs constitute the principal challenge of fiscal policy, no other single factor will exert more influence over the long-term balance of the federal budget. The effects of rising health care costs are not limited to public programs, however. Private payers have experienced similar growth in costs.

Over 28 million adults in the United States suffer from one or more age-related eye diseases. With the growing older population and increasing incidence of diabetes, this number is projected to rise. By 2022, the number of people with visual impairment and eye diseases could increase by 50% or more. Still, eye care access and utilization in the United States varies according to factors such as income, race, insurance, and having known vision or eye problems. Race/ethnicity and low-socioeconomic status appear to be independently associated with increased visual loss, placing poor ethnic minorities at highest risk.