Taking Retinal Imaging Beyond Ophthalmology

Beyond Technical Innovation: Finding Problems Worth Solving

For Vicky, evaluating medtech concepts begins with identifying meaningful problems — not just focusing on technical potential. 

"It's really about finding a problem that's worth solving and truly understanding it," she explains, emphasizing the need for personal investment. "Especially if you're thinking about leaving your full-time job to do something or invest a lot of energy, you better pick a problem you really care about because [entrepreneurship is] not a 9-5 job."

This problem-first approach requires analyzing several key factors, with market size being an important one. While Vicky acknowledges its significance, she cautions against making it the only metric.

"There has to be an unmet need because there have to be people that will help you drive adoption," she notes. "Yes, you can just find something so niche that even if you took over the whole entire space, you still don't generate enough revenue to get investors excited." 

Devices that serve small patient populations aren’t necessarily doomed, Vicky notes. You just need to show cost savings in other ways — such as reduced hospital stays, fewer complications, or improved outcomes.

But in identifeye’s case, the diabetic retinopathy market presented sufficient scale while offering clear adoption pathways and reimbursement mechanisms.

Vicky emphasizes that entrepreneurs must evaluate how their solution fits into existing healthcare workflows, which are notoriously difficult to change.

"Trying to figure out if this can fit with the people you have, with the workflow you have in a particular healthcare setting," is crucial for adoption, she notes.

The evaluation process must also include clear differentiation and scalability assessment. For diagnostic platforms especially, Vicky stresses the importance of expandability.

"If someone says, 'Here, I have a new diagnostic tool,' you always want to think about, 'Can the platform do more things? Can you detect more stuff? How scalable is the business?'"

The retinal imaging platform identifeye is building has significant expansion potential beyond diabetic retinopathy into cardiovascular risk assessment and other systemic conditions, creating long-term value.

"When you are building value, the economics usually follow," she says. "But you do need to do that homework to actually reach it."

Test Early, Test Often, and Leverage Feedback for Better Medical Device Design

Frequent iterations and rapid testing are key. Vicky's engineering background shapes her methodical approach to product development, with a strong focus on getting prototypes into testing environments quickly — a practice she's implemented at identifeye HEALTH.

"We can sit in isolation in our beautiful lab and build something. But what's really important is to test that the device or the prototype is safe and then try to get feedback."

The identifeye team has conducted extensive usability testing and smaller clinical studies under Institution Review Board oversight. This approach has yielded valuable insights that wouldn't have emerged in controlled laboratory settings — and can be used to refine product development. 

"If you were to compare the earlier versions of the system to where it is today from a behavioral perspective, we've learned a ton from all of the interesting things that a participant might do when you're putting them in front of one of the systems, or what are some of the preferences of the operators," Vicky notes.

Quick product testing that meets safety standards is critical, and Vicky emphasizes that testing doesn’t need to wait until your system is fully functional. In identifeye’s case, the team tested retinal imaging components separately, and this approach was instrumental for developing the "goggles" interface that resembles a virtual reality headset. Testing has led to refinements that today make the tech so intuitive that users are able to run the exam even before they’ve finished a product demo.   

Vicky’s advice is to think "very opportunistically about what prototypes and workflows you need to have outlined to capture feedback." 

Staying focused while incorporating user feedback is essential — and you can do that through disciplined feature prioritization, which means distinguishing between essential requirements and "desirements" to prevent scope creep.

Setting clear acceptance criteria for each development stage helps prevent feature creep, which can derail timelines and drain resources. Vicky recommends "being disciplined in what you say you will accomplish at this phase, knowing that you will always have a list of things you would really like to improve in the next iteration."