Sight Diagnostics, Maker of Lab-Grade Point-of-Care Blood Diagnostics System OLO, Raises $27.8M In Series C Strategic Funding to Deliver Medical Results to Patients Within Minutes

Sight Diagnostics, the company working to provide patients with lab-grade blood testing results in minutes rather than days by combining AI with a revolutionary method to ’digitize’ blood, announces today that it has raised $27.8 million in Series C funding led by Longliv Ventures, a member of the CK Hutchison Group –  a multinational conglomerate whose portfolio includes more than 14,900 health and beauty stores across Europe and Asia.
 
Keeping with a focus on strategic investment, other investors that joined the round also contribute to Sight’s technological and commercial expansion. Among these are Jack Nicklaus II, a healthcare philanthropist and board member of the Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation, Steven Esrick, a healthcare impact investor, and an additional major medical equipment manufacturer. Also joining Sight’s Series C are existing investors OurCrowd, Go Capital, and New Alliance Capital.
 
Sight’s mission is to improve health by providing fast, accurate, and pain-free testing when and where it is needed. The company will use the funding to continue the global expansion of its lab-grade point-of-care blood diagnostics system, OLO. Additionally, the round will support Sight’s regulatory efforts in the US and further its R&D to expand its menu of diagnostic tests.
 
OLO: Digitizing Blood Through AI
OLO allows patients to receive their blood test results within minutes at the point-of-care, rather than making them wait days to receive results, so that accurate treatment can be delivered faster. Moreover, OLO permits its blood samples to be collected from a finger-prick, thereby eliminating the pain and inconvenience of venous blood draws. Sight’s patented method of “digitizing” blood – which takes extremely detailed images of blood and then analyzes them with AI-driven computer vision algorithms – was first deployed in African countries and India in 2014, where it was used to detect malaria with exceptional accuracy and at low cost. Sight’s technology now offers Complete Blood Counts (CBCs) – the most prevalent blood test in the world.
 
“After proving our technology in malaria detection, it became overwhelmingly clear to us that the CBC, the world’s most common blood test, is where we’d make the most impact,” said Sarah Levy, Sight’s CTO. “The ability to create rich digital images of blood samples and analyze them in minutes has enormous potential to improve diagnostics and patient care. This funding round will also allow us to expand our R&D activities to develop applications beyond CBC.”
 
OLO is designed to serve as a ‘no compromise’ system, in that its CBC tests provide the full accuracy and breadth of information of high-end central-lab analyzers. Unlike prior blood analyzers, OLO is designed to empower even non-professional users – it is simple to use and requires little to no maintenance, with a system that comes pre-calibrated and features single-use test cartridges. OLO is also conveniently sized and priced with smaller clinics in mind.
 
The Investment: Powering Company Growth
The news follows Sight’s launch of OLO in Europe in July 2018 after completing a 287-person clinical trial, which led to OLO’s CE Mark registration and approval for commercial sale in the EU. Additionally, Sight recently concluded clinical trials in the US at Boston Children’s Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center to study OLO’s clinical performance. Sight is pursuing 510(k) FDA clearance for use in qualified US laboratories, to be followed by a CLIA waiver application to allow for use at the point-of-care.
 
“We are thrilled to be working with strategic investors and partners who will contribute to Sight’s global growth,” said Yossi Pollak, co-founder and CEO of Sight Diagnostics. “We sought out groups and individuals who genuinely believe in our mission to improve health for everyone with next-generation diagnostics, and most importantly, who can add significant value beyond financial support. We are already seeing positive traction across Europe and seeking additional strategic partners who can help us deploy OLO to major markets throughout the world.”
 
“Sight Diagnostics is providing a very compelling paradigm shift in blood testing and develops exciting capabilities built on the forefront of image-processing and artificial intelligence. We have recently launched Longliv Ventures, a member of the CK Hutchison Group, a fund which focuses on consumer-oriented digital health solutions, and we are proud to make the fund’s first investment in Sight,” Said Dr. Dan Eldar, the Executive Director of Longliv Ventures.
 
About Sight Diagnostics
Sight was created to provide patients with access to accurate, convenient and pain-free diagnostic testing that delivers results in minutes instead of days, in order to transform healthcare. To do so, Sight has developed an artificial intelligence-driven platform for blood analysis and infectious disease diagnostics based on its revolutionary methods for ‘digitizing’ blood. The company’s platform was first deployed in 2014 to detect malaria, for which over 600,000 tests have been sold across 25 countries. The company’s newest offering, OLO, brings lab-grade Complete Blood Counts (CBCs) to the point-of-care and is now available for purchase in the EU. Sight was founded by a team that includes Harvard-trained biotechnologists, experts in AI, and instrumentation engineers, many of whom hail from the world-renowned IDF technology units.
 
In the United States, OLO is an investigational system and is not yet available for sale.
 
For more information on OLO, please visit www.sightdx.com.

Contact Information

Emma Baron

Senior Account Executive

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