Topcon Healthcare, Inc. has officially launched a new oculomics-focused company: the Institute for Digital Health (IDHea).
To refresh: Oculomics refers to the merging of advanced ocular imaging and artificial intelligence (AI) to identify retinal biomarkers before the presentation of systemic disease symptoms.
Topcon sure has been busy… didn’t we just hear from them?
Indeed, we did. As reported earlier this week, the company announced the acquisition of Toku, Inc., a commercial medical device company with a portfolio of patented platforms leveraging retinal imaging technology for real-time evaluations of systemic diseases and biological age.
- Read up on that acquisition (and the three technologies involved).
Now to IDHea—which, didn’t we also already hear about this year?
That we did. Topcon initially announced the ocular data-as-a-service platform’s launch in May 2025.
- At the time: The company introduced IDHea as an artificial intelligence (AI)-based analytics platform designed to provide fast and secure access to real-world and clinical trial datasets—promoting healthcare application advancements to improve ocular/systemic disease outcomes.
And the reason for its creation?
It all leads back to supporting Topcon’s Healthcare from the Eye initiative, an ongoing digital health approach first launched in 2024 that has since served as the basis for the company’s numerous (and we do mean numerous) strategic business moves.
- See here for a look at these partnerships, acquisitions, investments, and launches.
Tell me more.
Now, Topcon is launching IDHea as a new company operating with a consortium of industry, clinical, and technology partners focused on eye care and oculomics-based clinical research.
Its purpose: Includes integrating multimodal, large-scale imaging data, AI-based analytics, and patient selection tools to accelerate drug discovery and shorten the research timeline for:
- Diagnostics
- Drug development
- Population health studies
Click here for a look at the FAST principle IDHea’s platform is based on.
And how does it plan to achieve these goals?
By building an “interoperable data ecosystem” to advance biomarker discovery, translational research, and clinical decision-making via partnerships with:
- Primary care networks
- Eyecare providers (ECPs)
- Academic centers
- Life-science organizations
For any organization or professional interested in becoming a partner, click here.
More details, please.
IDHEA is looking to identify associations between ocular health and systemic diseases to discover new biomarkers and therapeutic targets.
- Notably: The data collected for its platform is curated specifically from various multilevel-labeled datasets (see here), including retinal disease, multi-optical coherence tomography (OCT) precision, and multimodal healthy eyes.
So what therapeutic areas is the company targeting?
Per Topcon:
- Ophthalmic diseases and conditions such as geographic atrophy, neovascular (wet) age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and neuroprotection
- Systemic applications of oculomics in cardiovascular, metabolic, and neurodegenerative diseases
What else to know?
The company noted that its platform is designed for interoperability—data exchange and integration—with electronic medical records (EMRs) as well as compliance with global privacy and regulatory standards.
… for example?
Case in point: Sponsors, reading centers, and clinical research organizations (CROs) can use the platform’s real-time dashboard to:
- Generate real-world evidence
- Combine manual and AI-assisted image grading
- Monitor data quality and protocol compliance
And as a bonus: Clinical participation is also available beyond standard eyecare centers, extending to optical retail, kiosks, and primary care practices.
So! Where can I learn more about this?
Head over to the IDHea website (or reach out to the company directly).