Cylite’s vice president of sales and marketing, Ms Kylee Hall, has taken over as CEO from the company’s founder and director, Dr Steve Frisken.
Frisken will continue in an executive leadership role to provide operational and innovation guidance to the company.
Previously manager of Zeiss Australasia’s medical division, Hall took time away from the profession to pursue an Executive MBA, before joining Cylite, a Melbourne-based start-up taking on the giants of ophthalmology with its own award-winning OCT, in February 2020.
“Despite the challenges of COVID, it is an incredibly exciting time at Cylite and I am very motivated by the incredible impact the HP-OCT technology will make globally,” Hall said.
“The company is going through a huge expansion period with over 70 employees and a new facility recently leased in Melbourne that will provide 2,500m2 of office, laboratory and production space.”
Hall said Cylite’s technology also has huge potential in relation to artificial intelligence and big data.
“With over $25 million in private and government investment to date and a solid roadmap for the future, I am looking forward to establishing Cylite as world leader in digital health, which is estimated to be worth over $510 billion by 2026. The future looks incredibly bright for Cylite to become the next great Australian medical company,” she said.
HP-OCT in demand
The company has confirmed the first public showing of its Australian-made HP-OCT with Focus software will take place at O-Show in Sydney in May this year, with a European launch scheduled for the first quarter of 2023.
“There is already a lot of global interest around distribution of the product, and we look forward to making some exciting announcements later in the year,” Hall said.
“We have a strong product pipeline based on proprietary, protected technology which will allow us to grow to become a leader in the field of ocular diagnostics and to move into other areas including neurological and cardio-vascular diagnoses, with growth through both hardware sales, and software and service offerings.”
Hall said there are several research sites around the world already using the technology and a long list of ophthalmologists and optometrists eager to get a device for trial in the coming months.
An Australian Therapeutics Good Administration listing and European CE Mark certification have recently been received for the HP-OCT technology, which has been recognised with a suite of prestigious awards including the Engineers Australia Sir William Hudson Award, Australia’s highest engineering honour, and Good Design Australia Best in Class Engineering Award.
Cylite has also demonstrated, patented and are in early product development of a novel measurement technique, Hyperparallel Holoscopy, which provides for cellular-level imaging of the retina.
“The eye is the only organ in the human body where you can non-invasively observe parts of the central nervous system, which could open up this technology to helping us to better understand brain and heart conditions,” Frisken said.
“For example, more studies are indicating a positive link between understanding changes in the retina with early indicators to both heart disease and brain disease such as Alzheimer’s.”
Cylite is the only Australian company working in the ophthalmic diagnostic OCT space, an area traditionally dominated by the USA, Germany, and Japan. Founded in 2013, the company is backed by some of Australia’s most experienced and entrepreneurial scientists drawn from the fields of photonics, optics, instrumentation, and software development.
More reading:
O-Show to be first public showing of Aussie-made HP-OCT
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Cylite takes out Engineering Australia’s highest honour
