Sight Diagnostics, an Israeli digital health company that aims to bring affordable, scalable and accurate blood diagnostics to the point-of-care, has raised $27.8 million in Series C funding. The funding was led by Longliv Ventures, a division of multinational conglomerate CK Hutchison Group, who invested $10 million. Other investors included Jack Nicklaus II, Steven Esrick and existing investors OurCrowd, Go Capital and New Alliance Capital.
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Sight will use the fund to support the company’s regulatory efforts in the U.S., and to advance its research and development toward expanding its blood test offerings, according to Sarah Levy, CTO of Sight Diagnostics.
“After proving our technology in malaria detection, it became overwhelmingly clear to us that the CBC, the world’s most common blood test, is where we’d make the most impact,” Levy said. “The ability to create rich digital images of blood samples and analyze them in minutes has enormous potential to improve diagnostics and patient care. This funding round will also allow us to expand our R&D activities to develop applications beyond CBC.”
Olo, a small device, about the size of a toaster oven, leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to process scans. The device digitizes blood into colored microscope images, and then runs sophisticated computer vision algorithms that identify and count cell types in a sample, reports Venture Beat.
CBCs (Complete Blood Count) are used to investigate a range of disorders including anemia, infection, and certain cancers. Specialists are required to conduct the test and it takes several days for the results. Olo is simple and any layperson can operate it, it’s robust enough to account for small inaccuracies and errors, claims Sight Diagnostics.
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“Sight’s mission is to improve health by providing fast, accurate and pain-free testing when and where it is needed,” said Yossi Pollak, CEO of Sight Diagnostics. “The company will use the funding first and foremost to ramp up the global expansion of OLO, Sight’s lab-grade point-of-care blood diagnostics system, and with Longliv Ventures as a strategic investor we look forward to an effective and rapid expansion of our sales.”
