Pharmaceutical and medical device leader Jeff Hydar named Chief Commercial Officer
CHAMPAIGN, Ill.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–PhotoniCare, Inc., a company dedicated to revolutionizing healthcare by providing physicians with better diagnostic tools, today announced an oversubscribed $5.2 million Series A financing led by i2E Management Company Inc., with co-investment from OSF Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, and Dreampact Ventures. The company also announced that it has received a $2.1 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The competitive NIH SBIR program funds early-stage small businesses seeking to commercialize innovative biomedical technologies.
In January, PhotoniCare announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had granted clearance for its TOMi™ Scope for non-invasive imaging of the middle ear. The only technology capable of visualizing through the eardrum to assess middle ear fluid directly, the simple-to-use TOMi Scope helps to determine the presence or absence of fluid in the middle ear and to characterize the type of fluid.
The presence of fluid in the middle ear is a primary indicator for determining ear infection, which is the leading cause of hearing loss, surgery and antibiotic use, especially in children. More than ten million children per year experience ear infections in the U.S. alone; however, the current gold standard of otoscopy is a rudimentary tool that looks only at the surface of the eardrum, leading to misdiagnosis rates as high as 50%.