PEER Funding Edinburgh Biosciences – Heriot-Watt

1/1/2014

FP7-ICT-PSP-2013-7
Successful: €1.3m (€209,168 to Heriot Watt and €357,254 to Edinburgh Biosciences)
Project: CATACURE
 
PEER funding was used to provide specialist consultant support for proposal development, with the PEER contribution matched by the consortium. The proposal was submitted to the FP7-ICT-PSP-2013-7 call and is piloting prototype medical devices for the early diagnosis and non-invasive treatment of cataracts. 
 
Cataract remains the first cause for blindness worldwide (20 million people according to WHO). Current methods of examination of the eye have serious limitations and only allow detection of late changes and obvious opacities. The objective of the project is the integration in two pilots of new biophotonic modules to create and test in real application settings medical prototypes for the early diagnosis of cataract and for the non-invasive treatment of this disease. The project has so far resulted in a patent for Heriot-Watt, and a second patent for Edinburgh Biosciences which led to a new product reaching the market.