If you get a headache reading this story online, don’t blame Neurolens.
The product, made by Costa Mesa-based ophthalmologic device maker eyeBrain Medical Inc., is designed to improve both the vision and overall health of heavy computer and other digital device users.
Executives at the company, formed in 2012, say they believe its lenses can help alleviate many of the common symptoms of digital device overload, such as headaches, neck and shoulder pain and eyestrain.
Many of those symptoms actually result from eye misalignment, a malady the Neurolens product addresses using a contoured prism technology.
“The device is a real breakthrough,” said Chief Executive Davis Corley, whose 35-person and growing company has raised about $20 million.
It’s seeking to raise an additional $12 to $15 million in a Series D round.
Neurolens is the only product of its type on the market, said Corley, who co-founded the company with his father. He said the company is “bringing something completely new to the optometry practice.”
The Neurolens product price ranges from $650 to $850, excluding frames. It’s not currently covered by insurance.
The company hasn’t disclosed sales figures. Its product currently retails at about a dozen area optometry offices in Orange County among more than 60 locations across the country.
More than 90% of users reported improvements in symptoms within 45 days of use, according to the company’s website.
Screen-Time Overload
The company’s product couldn’t come out at a more opportune time, in an era of nearly constant texting, googling, social media posting and email checks.
The average American adult spends more than nine hours a day staring at a screen, according to a recent report by The Nielsen Co.
Regular eyestrain leads to more than just blurred vision.
“A lot of people don’t know it, that the symptoms they experience when using digital devices, reading or doing detailed work may be related to their eyes,” Corley said.
The company said proper eye alignment at all distances is essential for comfortable vision. Misalignment makes the eyes work harder to compensate, which can overstimulate the trigeminal nerve, the main nerve that sends sensation signals to the head, eyes, neck and shoulders.
That can result in symptoms such as tired eyes, neck pain and stiffness, light sensitivity, dry eyes and headaches.
A three-minute test at an optometrist’s office using an eyeBrain-made measurement device can “objectively and accurately” determine the extent of misalignment and allow doctors to prescribe the right remedy, the company said.
Notable Names
Davis Corley is the son of company Chairman J. Andy Corley, a pioneer in the intraocular lens industry.
The elder Corley brought presbyopia-correcting implant Crystalens to market in 2003; the maker of Crystalens, Aliso Viejo-based Eyeonics, was purchased in 2008 by Bausch & Lomb.
The former Eyeonics chief executive co-founded Neurolens with Davis, along with Jeff Krall, a private practitioner and owner of Krall Eye Clinic in Mitchell, S.D., and Vance Thompson, who specializes in laser vision correction and is director of refractive surgery at Vance Thompson Vision in Sioux Falls, S.D.
Other board members at the upstart company include noted medical device investor Bill Link, a partner at Versant Venture Management LLC and Flying L Partners, and Tom Frinzi, worldwide president, surgical at Johnson & Johnson Vision, which was formed after Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) acquired Santa Ana-based Abbot Medical Optics last year.
Other members and investors are LensCrafters Inc. founder E. Dean Butler and Sioux Falls, S.D.-based venture capital firm Bluestem Capital Co.
The company got its start in South Dakota, where it conducted research and early clinical work. It moved to Orange County in 2016 following a $6 million Series B round from 21 investors.
Davis said the move to Orange County made sense because “there is a tremendous source of eye-care industry talent and experience.”
Optometrists
The company initially targeted its product at neurologists, positioning the device to treat chronic headaches.
It later switched strategy, and now targets optometrists.
Adrian Pop of Family Optometry Center of Orange, who started offering the lens to patients about 2 ½ years ago as an initial investigator, said he has been pleasantly surprised by the positive responses he’s received.
“Initially I was using them mostly for headache symptoms and neck tech [digital version syndrome],” he wrote in an email. “But as I explore the vastness of trigeminal dysphoria, I realized how much we can help patients with motion sickness, dizziness, vertigo, visual perception, double vision, dry eye sensation, severe fatigue and the list goes on and on.”
Pop said the device changed the way he practices.
“I definitely noticed a trend since using the system,” he said, referring to trigeminal dysphoria symptoms, such as headaches. “Prior to using it I didn’t really pay attention to it as much as I should have, and I feel like most practitioners are in the same boat since there were not many effective options to treat these conditions.”
Corley said annual eye exams are good opportunities to introduce patients to its product. Optometrists can survey the frequency and intensity of a patient’s condition and help determine whether symptoms are caused by eye misalignment, posture, stress or other issues.
“This is a new category, and we need to educate the industry,” according to Corley, who added the chief executive role in September. He’s also president.
Also in September, the company named Thomas Chirillo chief commercial officer. He has almost four decades of sales and marketing experience in the eye-care sector and was most recently senior vice president of sales and marketing at TearScience Inc., which J&J Vision acquired last year.
The use of a prism lens isn’t new; the first version of the lens was invented and released in 1959.
But a standard prism lens can address eye misalignment only at a single distance, whereas Neurolens is designed to create a customizable prism lens that could address misalignment at all distances, company executives said.
“This is the biggest innovation in lens design since the invention of the progressive lense,” according to Corley.
Corley said he’s confident in the Neurolens market opportunity. The U.S. lens market is “$47 billion, and that’s just glasses,” he said.
