Bengaluru, India | 15th April, 2025 – Remidio Innovative Solutions, a global leader in AI-powered ophthalmic diagnostics, has announced a strategic partnership with RetinaRisk, a leading health tech company from Iceland, to enhance risk-based diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening in India and Iceland.

This partnership brings together two powerful innovations, Remidio’s Medios DR AI for automated DR detection and RetinaRisk’s personalized risk triaging algorithm for progression to sight-threatening DR. Medios DR is an edge-AI solution that runs entirely on a smartphone without the need for internet access or cloud connectivity, offering real-time DR grading at the point of care. RetinaRisk calculates a patient’s risk level and suggests a recommended screening interval using key clinical inputs such as HbA1c, blood pressure, diabetes type and duration, and DR status.

From a public health perspective, this enables more cost-effective DR screening programs by individualising screening intervals—extending the frequency for low-risk individuals while ensuring timely follow-up for high-risk cases.

“This collaboration moves us beyond detection into prediction, enabling care pathways that are not just reactive but truly preventative,” said Dr. Anand Sivaraman, CEO, Remidio. “It aligns perfectly with our mission to eliminate preventable blindness using technology that is clinically robust, scalable, and accessible.”

Dr. Rajiv Raman, Senior Consultant at Sankara Nethralaya, added, “In our validation study involving nearly 1,000 individuals with type 2 diabetes from the SNDREAMS cohort, a four-year longitudinal study done by Sankara Nethralaya, the RetinaRisk algorithm demonstrated strong predictive performance for sight-threatening diabetic retinopathy (STDR), with the AUC improving to 0.853 when local clinical factors like albuminuria and baseline DR severity were incorporated. Notably, this personalized, risk-based model enabled a 56% reduction in screening frequency and led to annual cost savings of over 50% for patients without DR and 41% for those with NPDR. The integration of Remidio’s portable fundus imaging solution, combined with its on-device AI to automatically grade baseline DR severity, makes this partnership a uniquely scalable, point-of-care solution. We are excited about the transformative potential of this collaboration for public eye health.”

Aegir Thor Steinarsson, CEO, RetinaRisk commented, “We are excited to deepen our collaboration with Remidio, whose Fundus on Phone (FOP) and Medios DR AI platform are already being used successfully in Iceland for diabetic retinopathy screening. The ability to combine our risk prediction algorithm with real-time retinal grading—delivered via a portable, smartphone-based solution—is truly game-changing. Together, we are demonstrating that AI-enabled screening can be made accessible, personalized, and impactful in both developed and emerging healthcare systems.”

The urgency of this collaboration is highlighted by growing global and national public health concerns. Globally, an estimated 22.27% of people with diabetes have diabetic retinopathy, and the number of affected adults is projected to rise from 103.12 million in 2020 to 160.50 million by 2045. India alone accounts for over 9.2 million cases, highlighting the urgent need for scalable, personalized screening models.

The partnership will kick off with pilot programs targeting high-prevalence diabetic populations in India, aiming to create a scalable framework for prioritized referrals, longitudinal tracking, and reduced vision loss due to DR.

Remidio has been at the forefront of DR screening at scale, with its clinically validated, portable fundus imaging devices and AI algorithms for DR detection already deployed across national programs, vision centres, and remote settings. To date, Remidio’s technologies have enabled over 15 million eye screenings in 40+ countries, many of them in low-resource environments where early detection is critical.