Melbourne-based OCT manufacturer Cylite has been awarded the Sir William Hudson Award – the highest accolade an engineering project can receive from Engineers Australia.
The company was among a pool of finalists from the Australian Engineering Excellence Awards who are selected to compete at the national level for the award.
This year’s winners ranged from a self-sufficient, containerised water treatment plant servicing remote communities in Northern Territory to slope stability radar technology for monitoring and detecting movement and potential collapses across open-cut mines and tailings dams.
Cylite – founded in 2013 – entered the awards with its hyperparallel OCT (HP-OCT) system that is said to provide industry-leading A-scan speeds and capture volume data for accurate analytics for corneal and refractive specialists. The company claims its fourth generation platform overcomes the eye-motion limitations of previous generations of OCT.
“It is a huge honour for Cylite to be selected from such an amazing group of projects. I’d also like to thank the outstanding team of optical, electronic, mechanical and software engineers at Cylite who have brought an extremely complex technology from a concept right through to commercial realisation,” Cylite chief technology officer Mr Grant Frisken said.
The company’s CEO Dr Steve Frisken said he was excited and surprised Cylite had been awarded the national prize against a field of strong engineering projects.
“I would like to personally thank each of our extraordinary team for their creativity and dedication in delivering excellence in engineering across so many fields. We are also grateful to Cobalt design for their industrial design support and the wonderful look and feel of this innovative clinical diagnostic instrument,” he said.
“These innovations will, I believe, truly have a lasting impact on global eye health, which is a legacy that will provide ongoing pride to all those involved.”
Cylite is pursuing European regulatory approval for its OCT system, which would pave the way for clearance by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in Australia.
The Engineering Australia judges citation for Cylite:
“This is a remarkable piece of equipment and demonstrates the profound impact biomedical engineering can have on society. By using thousands of light waves to create an accurate and almost instantaneous 3D image of the eye, the equipment streamlines the screening process that currently requires several individual diagnostic devices to build a clinical picture of the patient. This enables more health professionals to routinely screen more patients across the five areas of eye conditions effecting Australians which allows for earlier diagnosis it also enables the earlier intervention and has the significant potential to mitigate the impact of the emotion and financial burden on society that results from many of these mostly avoidable eye conditions. The judges also praised the equipment for its ability to incorporate the modern principals of health and safety, ethical operations, and environmental outcomes to benefit the user.”
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