Neuro Vision Technology Named Hottest Company at ANZA Gateway to the US Summit
Neuro Vision Technology (NVT), took top honours at the conclusion of the 2008 ANZA Gateway to the US Summit last night at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, CA.
Pitching alongside 11 other Australian companies taking part in an intensive three-day immersion in Silicon Valley, NVT captured the Guy Manson Hottest Company Award for its brain-training software system that enables people with acquired or traumatic brain injury to dramatically improve their functional vision.
“NVT is poised for success in the US,” said Viki Forrest, ANZA CEO. “They’ve made solid initial connections with clinical leaders here in the States which validates the effectiveness of their brain-training software for the millions of people who can’t see well after a brain injury.”
ANZA’s Guy Manson Award includes 6 months of Fast Track mentoring to significantly accelerate an Australian or New Zealand Company’s expansion into the US market.
NVT CEO Gayle Clarke and her colleague, Allison Hayes accepted the award from ANZA and Southern Cross Venture Partners, who along with the Guidewire Group evaluated the 12 Gateway companies on their product, pitches and preparedness for the vast US marketplace.
“The Guy Manson Award will allow us to build on our successes in the US and reach thousands of people with acquired or traumatic brain injury—those who have come back from Iraq or Afghanistan, for example—to help them see better more quickly,” said Ms Clarke.
“Thanks to our participation in the ANZA Gateway program and now the Fast Track, we will be better equipped to take advantage of this huge market opportunity.”
About ANZA Technology Network (ANZATech)
ANZA Technology Network is the leading independent organization connecting the Australian, New Zealand and US innovative technology sectors.
Through its Gateway and Fast Track to the US programs ANZA has assisted hundreds of Australian and New Zealand companies as they enter the US market—more than any other non-government organization.
For more information: www.anzatechnet.com
Spreading the message of Neurological Vision Deficits
August 2008
The desire to increase awareness and need for specialised services in the area of neurological vision loss from an acquired brain injury is a key driver for Neuro Vision Technology.
The ideal opportunity to voice this message presented itself when three key Conferences were scheduled in North America in July and August.
CEO, Gayle Clarke, and fellow Director, Allison Hayes, headed off on a ‘Roadshow’ that took NVT first to the 9th International Low Vision Conference 2008, held on July 7 – 11th at the Palais des Congres de Montreal, Canada.
From Canada the team moved to Chicago for the conference of the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (AER).
The final leg of the journey was to attend the Blinded Veteran’s 63rd National Convention in Phoenix, Arizona August 12- 16th.
These conferences attracted leaders in the field of Low Vision and Rehabilitation services from across the United States and Internationally.
The market survey project was made possible through funds provided from Playford Capital, and came at a critical stage in Neuro Vision Technology’s plans to direct our marketing focus towards the US in both the private and government health sectors.
Mr Andrew Bollen, a member of Playford Capital’s investment team, attended the Vision 2008 Low Vision Conference to gain first hand knowledge of the Low Vision and Brain Injury Rehabilitation sectors and provided invaluable advice and support.
“Attendance at these key conferences reinforced the need for service provision for patients with neurological vision deficits. Ophthalmologists, Optometrists, Mobility Instructors, Rehabilitation Staff, Special Educators and Low Vision Clinic staff all expressed an existing need within their fields of expertise. NVT came away from the 8 week trip with a very impressive potential pipeline of sales and encouraged to continue to move into the North American and European markets.”
Gayle Clarke, CEO, NVT.
NVT support Blinded Veterans Association goal of improved services
August 2008
Blinded veterans from across the US came together in August 12-16th at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona, for the BVA 63rd National Convention.
400 delegates braved the extremely high summer temperatures in Phoenix to meet and learn about the latest technology. “Operation Peer Support Initiative” included 11 US service members recently blinded in Iraq. As a new precedent of the initiative this year, the BVA family also welcomed three of their counterparts from the United Kingdom as special guests.
Visitors to the NVT Exhibit were interested to find that assessment and therapy interventions are available to address the needs of veterans suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury and associated vision loss.
The timing of the conference coincided with announcements from Congress that additional funds will now be directed towards these key programs.
Running concurrently with the Blinded Veteran Convention was the VA Blind Rehabilitation Centers training seminars.Staff from across the US, including Puerto Rico, attended to learn more about service delivery needs. This gave NVT the opportunity to provide individual demonstrations to key staff members and provide awareness of the assessment and training procedures provided when using the NVT Vision Rehabilitation System.
“ This was a great opportunity to meet with a large number of service providers all of whom gave added endorsement for the need to have specialised assessment and training programs designed to meet the complex needs of people with a vision deficit due to acquired and traumatic brain injury”.
Educators of the Vision Impaired show their enthusiasm for the NVT Vision Rehabilitation System
July 2008
Neuro Vision Technology Pty Ltd was represented by CEO Gayle Clarke and fellow Director, Allison Hayes, at the recent bi-annual conference of the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (AER). The conference, held July 22-27 in the Chicago Downtown Marriott, registered almost 1,400 delegates.
NVT’s participation in the Conference took the form of an exhibition booth and formal presentations.
Case Study presentation by Kathy Johnson, from the Royal Society for the Blind, South Australia, outlined the benefits of the NVT Vision Rehabilitation System for a number of their clients.
The interest at these presentations was overwhelming, with delegates spilling out the door. The keen interest in programs for Neurological Vision Loss also brought hundreds of conference attendees to the NVT Exhibit during the three day period.
Visitors to the booth covered a broad spectrum of service providers including Occupational Therapist, Mobility Specialists, Low Vision Teachers and others in the field of education for the blind. The outcome of the conference attendance was the affirmation that the staff providing direct services to this complex group of clients are keen to embrace specialised training and therapy options.
“The aim is to bring together the expertise of the Blindness and Low Vision Sector with the skill set of the Brain Injury rehabilitation sector so that clients benefit from a multidisciplinary team approach”, says Allison Hayes, Manager of Training and Research, “NVT are ready to provide the knowledge and therapy solutions that will meet this growing need”.
NVT at US House of Representatives Committee on Veterans Affairs
April 2008
Click here to read Gayle Clarke's submission to the US House of Representatives Committee on Veterans Affairs Congressional hearing.
March 2008
An invitation has been extended to Ms. Gayle Clarke, Chief Executive Officer of Neuro Vision Technology Pty Ltd by the US House of Representatives Committee on Veterans Affairs as follows:
"On Wednesday, April 2, 2008, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs will conduct a hearing on Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Related Vision Issues. This hearing will be held at 10.00 a.m. in the Cannon House Office Building. The Subcommittee invites Neuro Vision Technology to present its views on the hearing topic indicated above. Your organisation will be recognized for five minutes, and the complete written statement will be made part of the hearing record. The Committee provides public access to its hearing statements on the Internet through the World Wide Web at the House of Representatives and the Library of Congress Additionally, hearings are now broascast live, in real time, over the Internet, and are archived on our website so they may be accessed following each hearing."
Links to this site will be made available after the hearing.
New treatments for traumatic eye injuries
March 2008
An article from SFGate the online San Francisco Chronicle:
"...in a sign of the changing nature of warfare, ocular wounds have become among the most common - and devastating - form of battlefield injury. An estimated 10 to 13 percent of wounded Iraq war veterans have sustained direct, penetrating eye damage, typically as a result of modern weaponry that unleashes an explosive cascade of fragments. Proportionately, more eye injuries are occurring in the Iraq war than in all previous wars, said Tom Zampieri, direct of government relations for the Blinded Veterans Association in Washington. "In WWII, 6 percent of all the wounded had eye injuries," he said. "In Vietnam, it was 9 percent. In this war, some eye doctors have told me they have never seen such horrific eye injuries." More...
RSB Instigates Neurological Vision Loss Research Project.
The Royal Society for the Blind (RSB) has identified the need to improve the identification and rehabilitation of Neurological Vision Loss (NVL).
To achieve this, the RSB has commenced a neurological research project, in partnership with Neuro Vision Technology Pty Ltd, and sponsored by the Bill & Jean Henson Trust (managed by Perpetual). Mr Andrew Daly, Executive Director of the RSB says in a recent press release:
“this project will measure the success of current rehabilitation protocols and new technologies towards increasing the independence and integration of people with NVL into our community.”
In September this year approval from the Repatriation General Hospital Ethics Committee was received for the study to carry out a comparison between two groups; one receiving current rehabilitation intervention and another group receiving this standard intervention plus the addition of NVT Vision Therapy.
Outcome measures will include clinical assessments conducted by Dr Celia Chen, Neuro Ophthalmologist, who will record results from computerised perimetry testing, acuity, contrast sensitivity and reading speed. Other functional outcome measures will be used to assess safety in mobility tasks and patient centred measures of Quality of Life.
Work is currently underway to finalise the measurement tools and staff specifically trained to conduct the project will be ready to commence data collection in early 2008.
The standardisation of assessment and training programs provided by the NVT Vision 2000 software enable data collected from the Repatriation Study to form part of an international collaborative project. This collaboration between sites in the UK and US provides the potential for pooling of data for a more powerful study, in terms of participant numbers, to be completed over a shorter timeframe.
Visibility, Scotland, to provide an expansion of services for people with Neurological Vision Impairment.
Visibility is the new name for Glasgow and West of Scotland Society for the Blind.
They have followed down the path taken by Fife Society for the Blind in expanding their services to include the significant numbers of service users that have a NVI as a result of Acquired Brain Injury.
Two vision rehabilitation specialists will commence a training course conducted by NVT and experienced staff from Fife Society for the Blind. At the completion of the three week course the Visibility team will then return to Glasgow ready to implement services in the western region of Scotland. These staff will be part of a new project working with combat veterans who have sight loss due to brain injury.
Visibility were successful in acquiring grant funding to support the project which has been given the name Sealledh©, which is Gaelic for sight.
Tampa Veterans Affairs Medical Center to use the NVT system in its Polytrauma Center
This decision follows on from the presentation of preliminary results indicating successful outcomes for patients undergoing NVT training in both the Western Blind Rehabilitation Center and Polytrauma Center located in the Palo Alto VA medical facility.
Tampa VA have purchased two NVT scanning devices and their Occupational Therapists have commenced a training program in the use of NVT Vision Rehabilitation System.
The Tampa Group are now part of the growing number of Polytrauma centers that are recognising the need for specialist Vision Therapy to assist this group of young Veterans with complex rehabilitation needs.
At the completion of the training program staff will have the necessary skills to provide a comprehensive assessment of vision deficits and be able to implement an effective intervention program to deal with visual field loss and perceptual deficits commonly associated with Traumatic Brain Injury.
Increasing awareness of NVI in veterans
Statistics relating to the incidence of NVI The timing of our visit to Washington coincided with an upsurge in public awareness of the high numbers of young soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering the effects of Traumatic Brain Injury.
“Head and limb injuries are the signature wounds of this war because Iraqi insurgents have made the IED their weapon of choice. Modern armour and rapid care mean that most of the injured survive, but many live with traumatic brain injuries and amputations”. National Geographic, December 2006
An excerpt from a recent report provided to Veterans Affairs stated the following:
As of January 31st 2007, the department of defense (DoD) reported that 24,385 members of the military had been directly or indirectly wounded.
The Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) reports that more than 1,780 of those wounded are known to have sustained brain injuries. In addition, a study at Fort Carson, Colorado found that nearly 18% of soldiers returning from the Middle East had suffered from at least a mild form of TBI which was largely due to the percussion wave caused by explosives.
Over 74% of all TBI patients in the Palo Alto Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Level 1 & level II Polytrauma care facilities have reported visual complaints. Upon examination, about 95% of patients with visual sequelae due to TBI have normal funduscopic findings. Only 25% have a visual impairment that is recognised during a routine eye exam.
Hence, many patients with good ocular health and 20/20 acuity may have visual problems that go undiagnosed and untreated.
March 2007
Representatives from NVT visited Washington DC to meet with key decision makers within Government and Veterans Affairs administration.
With the assistance of the Austrade Offices in Washington, a hectic schedule of meetings were conducted to discuss the implementation of the NVT Vision Rehabilitation System into US Veterans Affairs medical facilities throughout the US.
Support for improved assessment and therapy intervention for US veterans with neurological vision loss was received from key advocacy organisations, such as the Blinded Veterans Association.
Our visit with Tom Miller, Executive Director of the Blinded Veterans Association, resulted in an invitation being made for the Managing Director of NVT, Gayle Clarke, to attend the Blinded Veterans Conference in Albuquerque in August of this year.
US Department of Defence provided a forum for numerous, high ranking personnel involved with the Department of Defence Force Health Protection and Readiness Programs to meet with Directors of NVT to discuss the need for inclusion of comprehensive vision assessments and therapy as a minimum clinical standard for all personnel with a TBI undergoing rehabilitation in VA medical facilities and outpatient services.
NVT directors were also grateful for the opportunity given by Stan Poel, the Director of Blind Rehabilitation Services in the Department of Veterans Affairs, to personally participate in a demonstration of the Vision 2000 software program, designed to document a patient’s progress through a vision therapy program.
In the past the issue of funding to support these programs has been a factor; however, this situation appears now to be changing. Following our visit in March US Congress passed a bill for an additional US $50 million to be spent on TBI.
Pressure is now required to ensure that vision loss no longer remains a hidden disability and receives the attention that it deserves given the dramatic impact that Neurological Vision Impairment has on a person’s ability to function independently in the community.
Brain Injury Association of America
Whilst in Washington, the opportunity was taken to meet with representatives from the Brain Injury Association of America to share information about programs within the US and Australia.
A key outcome of this meeting was recognition of the value of using comparable outcome measures for evaluating the success of Brain Injury Rehabilitation Programs.
One step to facilitating comparative analysis of data was the adoption of the Mayo-Portland Adaptability Inventory-4 into proposed research protocols of studies to be conducted within Australia.
This tool is widely used throughout many brain injury rehabilitation facilities in the US and will now be added as one of the outcome measures used in research carried out in Australia using the NVT system.
Agreement around the need for further development of assessment tools and therapy intervention to address the needs of those people affected by NVI was forthcoming in all meetings, including those conducted with the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Optometrists.
2 February 2007
Our new website layout allows visitors to easily locate information about Neuro Vision Technology (NVT) in a convenient and fresh environment. As well as developing the site, Succinct Ideas have provided a digital marketing program and in conjunction with video production house, Events on Video have produced a video suitable for use direct from the NVT website, or via CD-ROM and DVD.
Neuro Vision Technology (NVT) Newsletter
31 January 2007
- A silent epidemic sweeping the word
- Introducing Neuro Vision Technology
- New generation scanning device
- Vision 2000 software
- The need for research
- Cost savings & efficiency
- Training programs
- NVT has gone international
- The future
Neuro Vision Technology (NVT) Newsletter
The 12th International Mobility Conference
27 November 2006
The International Mobility Conference, first inaugurated in 1979 aims to promote professional exchange in Orientation and Mobility training for the visually impaired persons for their better social integration, and arousal of public awareness in the provision of good access facilities for the visually impaired living in the community.
The Hong Kong Society for the Blind .
NVT CEO Gayle Clarke presented the following papers:
2 October 2006
World Sight Day, which this year falls on October 12, is a global annual event, held under the auspices of "VISION 2020: The Right to Sight," a joint initiative of the World Health Organization and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. VISION 2020 brings together an international coalition of professional organizations, eye care institutions, non-governmental organizations and corporations to raise awareness about worldwide problems of vision impairment and to develop strategies to prevent avoidable blindness. This year's theme is Low Vision and Refractive Error.
Read more about World Sight Day on these sites:
Vision 2020
Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA)
Vision Connection
Stroke is one of the most important health priorities in Scotland.
4 May 2006
It is the single biggest cause of disability with 45% of survivors being physically dependent on others. Almost 1 in 4 men and 1 in 5 women aged 45 can expect to have a stroke if they live to 85. Stroke accounts for around 5% of all NHS expenditure in Scotland.
Despite the high priority given to stroke it has not been widely acknowledged
that a 1/3rd of those suffering a stroke, will have a serious sight loss as a result. The impact on independence can be quite dramatic and yet effective rehabilitation has not traditionally been made available in this area.
We are delighted that Fife Society for the Blind 's Insight Team, working in partnership with NHS Fife are the first to establish a new 'Stroke and Sight Loss' assessment and rehabilitation service, outside Australia. Working with Neuro Vision Technology (NVT) in South Australia, Fife based staff are now able to respond to early referrals where a sight loss is suspected.
A formal launch of this exciting new service by Professor James McGoldrick, Chair Fife NHS Board, took place on 4th May 2006 at Fife Sensory Impairment Centre, a first in the UK and one that has the potential to impact directly on the independence of this high priority group.
To learn more about stroke and sight loss, the new service or to hear testimonials from those benefiting from it, please contact: Alan Suttie, Chief Executive, Fife Society for the Blind on 01592 412666, email: alan@fsbinsight.co.uk
From left to right is: George Brechin (Chief Executive, NHS Fife), Alan Suttie (CEO, Fife Society for the Blind) Gayle Clarke (Managing Director Neuro Vision Technology (NVT)) Prof. James McGoldrick (Chairman of NHS Fife), Stephen Moore (Head of Social Work Fife Council and Councillor for Fife Council.
COMET Grant Helps SA Innovators Restore Eyesight
22 December 2005
An innovative eyesight rehabilitation package designed to maximise patient recovery from vision impairment caused by brain injury or stroke has received a $64,000 grant in the latest round of Australian Government innovation funding.
Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane today announced Adelaide-based Neuro Vision Technology Pty Ltd (NVT) as one of nine companies to receive funding totaling $555,200 under the Commercialising Emerging Technologies (COMET) program.
Nationally, more than $9 million was awarded for 20 innovative projects under the Commercial Ready and COMET programs.
"Neuro Vision Technology's project is an important development in the treatment of neurological vision impairment, which has tended to fall between services provided by medical specialists in the areas of blindness and brain injury.'' Mr Macfarlane said.
"Their package is designed to diagnose the extent of vision loss, develop an appropriate rehabilitation program to maximise vision recovery, and then re-train the residual vision to compensate for the vision impairment - similar to the way physiotherapists rehabilitate muscles and joints after injury.''
The project consists of an integrated package of software, hardware and treatment protocols as well as a comprehensive training course for clinicians.
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