A company founded by four faculty members in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh is now official.
On June 11, 2025, NetraMind Innovations signed with the University of Pittsburgh Innovation Institute, marking them as fully licensed and functional.
Distinguished Professor and Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology, José-Alain Sahel, MD; Professor of Ophthalmology, Medical Retina and Vitreoretinal Surgery, Jay Chhablani, MD; and Research Assistant Professors Kiran Kumar Vupparaboina, PhD and Sandeep Chandra Bollepalli, PhD, created this company to address the need for cross-platform, multimodal image analysis helping to diagnose age-related macular degeneration (AMD) at an early stage. Currently there is no single solution capable of performing this kind of analysis to enhance diagnostic accuracy and prediction.
“We now have the ability to work without external partners and aim to build a product to have early detection of AMD,” Dr. Chhablani said.
The company’s solutions are tailored for the leading causes of blindness: age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy (DR). These two conditions are projected to increase to 5.4 million and 11.4 million by 2050, respectively. Diagnosis requires multimodal imaging, and comparison of disease progression over multiple visits means precise monitoring is essential. Advanced image analysis is needed to detect and quantify disease lesions.
NetraMind Innovations has an AI-driven cross-platform solution – one is clinical-focused, and the other is research-focused. They are being touted as cost-effective. The business model is subscription-based, using a common pricing model in healthcare.
The next step is to roll out the product, which will be used for clinical research image analysis only. This will give the company a lot of experience about the real-life applications.
“We will continue working on developing our AMD detection/prediction tool and are hoping to take next steps of pilot trials/FDA submissions in the coming year,” Dr. Chhablani said.
To read more about the NetraMind signing, read this article by the University of Pittsburgh Innovation Institute.