Heru Inc. is changing vision care to meet the needs of a post-pandemic world with its artificial intelligence-powered eye diagnostic and correction platform. The Miami, FL-based company raised $30 million in a series A round to help it achieve this goal.

The company’s solution is an autonomous AI-driven vision diagnostics and augmentation software for use with commercially available augmented reality headsets. Heru was founded by Mohamed Abou Shousha, MD, PhD. and was spun out of the University of Miami’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in 2018.

Heru was named after is the ancient Egyptian God of health and protection. Shousha spoke on the importance of the device and how it could be a new paradigm for vision diagnostics.

“The status quo for diagnosis is a bulky expensive unreliable device,” Shousha told MD+DI. “The Heru wearable technology uses AI and cloud computing to solve this limited access paradigm. The status quo of treating these patients is medical and surgical treatment that is designed to stop progression - to stop the worsening of the condition. But it doesn’t really help patients with their quality of life or independence. Heru’s platform is designed to do that – to help patients live a better life, to be more functional, and more independent.”

In December of 2020, the company announced FDA registration of the technology. Shousha said with this financing the company would now be in a position to further develop the platform.  The round was led by global investment firm D1 Capital Partners with participation from SoftBank Ventures Opportunity Fund, Maurice R. Ferre, M.D., Frederic H. Moll, M.D., Krillion Ventures, and a consortium of investors.

“This financing round will help us advance the development of Heru’s groundbreaking diagnostic and vision correction technology platform,” he said. “There are many more applications to come, and this round will really help Heru launch the next applications …”