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Bionic Eye's Future Getting Clearer
By mivision
August 1, 2008
By mivision
August 1, 2008
By the end of this year, all things being equal, 30-year-old Sydney man Steve Horan will be the first recipient of a bionic eye invented and tested right here in Australia.
Steve has severe visual impairment and absolutely no peripheral vision. He's unable to read and is only mobile with the help of a guide dog. If everything goes according to plan, Steve's life will improve dramatically.
He has volunteered to be the first person to receive an Australian bionic eye and remains cautious, but hopeful.
"I don't expect too much for myself," Steve says, adding that he has nothing to lose by being the first to receive a bionic eye, developed by Sydney ophthalmologist
If it all goes according to plan, this bionic eye, which works on a different principal to those being tested overseas, will not only give Steve some kind of vision, but will earn Australia much kudos and "a real motza", as one newspaper put it.
The Australian bionic eye has made it this far on funding of just AUD$100,000 over the past ten years which was supplied by the Genetic Eye Foundation.
That now all looks like changing after a recent meeting between Professor Coroneo, Dr Chowdhury and Federal Health Officials in Canberra, who have budgeted AUD$40 million of public funding for an Australian bionic eye and, by all reports, this project looks like getting a substantial amount in the near future.
This also follows a personal letter written to Prime Minister Rudd, by Richard Grills, Director of the Genetic Eye Foundation and Chairman of Optical Distributors and Manufacturers Association (ODMA).
Dear Mr Rudd
In the letter, Mr. Grills says in part: "It is refreshing to see a Prime Minister of Australia who values research and innovation in the medical field. Your personal adoption of the bionic eye concept has given us all hope that Australia's efforts in the development of the world's first functional bionic eye can be achieved. We are so close Prime Minister, with your help we can make it happen.
"The major difference between this device and others under development overseas is that the implant is placed externally on the outer wall of the eye, whereas others are implanted inside the eye on the retina. This Australian concept has been patented and is a far safer and more easily reversed procedure, however it works effectively".
Mr Grills told mivision that money is the ingredient now needed to help this project along - a minimum of about AUD$300,000 to get it started. He says the team is asking the Government for AUD$10 million over the next five years.
"There are other bionic eye projects in Australia and about 23 around the world, but a lot of them are having problems with their implants because they are implanted inside the eye on the retina. This introduces tremendous complication rates and a number have failed completely."
Sceptical
Mr Grills says he is sceptical about these other bionic eyes publicised recently in the U.S. and U.K.
"In order to achieve some of these results they claim (such as a formerly blind woman who now shoots hoops with her son) they would have to have an electrode array with millions of electrodes.
"In the retina we've got seven million cones in a quarter of a square millimetre area and 137 million nerve endings in the whole retina. In order to achieve that, the number
of pixels effectively, which would be each in dividual piece of light, would have to be in
the order of several thousand pixels. It may come to that in the future, but right now the
electrode arrays are in the order of 32 to 64 electrodes."
Asked if he believed that this particular bionic eye project was the most advanced of
them all, Mr Grills said: "Well, I have spoken to Dr Chowdhury and he believes we are
right up there and if we are the world's first -it's huge"!