Text丨Fang Wen
出品丨牛刀财经(niudaocaijing)
In the past year, from ChatGPT to Nvidia's out-of-stock GPUs, cutting-edge technologies around AI have become a hot topic. Especially in the field of medical AI, taking advantage of the east wind of the big health outlet, it has attracted more and more medical companies to enter the game.
Under the fierce competition in the industry, Eagle Eye Technology, the "first share of medical AI", has insisted on pioneering and innovating with great strategic determination, and its performance has steadily improved.
On March 27, medical AI company Eagle Eye Technology announced its 2023 annual performance report. During the reporting period, Eagle Eye Technology's revenue increased to 203.9 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 79.5%. The company continued to improve its profitability, achieving a gross profit of 125 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 124%, and a gross profit margin of 12.2 percentage points increased to 61.3%, achieving both revenue and gross profit margin growth.
1. How big is the "vision" of Eagle Pupil?
As we all know, compared to other countries, China is a veritable myopic power. Previously, according to the World Health Organization, the number of myopia patients in China is as high as 600 million, and the rate of myopia among adolescents ranks first in the world.
Therefore, it is urgent to prevent and treat myopia in adolescents. The 14th Five-Year Plan for National Eye Health (2021-2025) released by the National Health Commission proposes to achieve an annual eye care and vision examination coverage rate of more than 90% for children aged 0 to 6 by 2025, so as to continuously improve the overall level of eye health of children and adolescents.
Such a huge demand has also made the myopia prevention and control market a considerable prospect. According to CICC's estimates, the scale of the mainland myopia prevention and control market may reach about 210 billion yuan in 2030.
As the saying goes, deep water is fat, and in the field of myopia prevention and control, fresh blood is constantly joining, and the product line is becoming more and more abundant, and at the same time, there are new technologies such as AI and VR to help.
In fact, Eagle Eye Technology has developed an integrated diagnosis and treatment solution from AI examination and fitting, AI evaluation and predictive analysis, to the prevention, correction and control of myopia.
Eagle Eye Technology has been in the field of retinal imaging AI for a long time and has launched a portable intelligent fundus camera. The relevant technology of the equipment is at the international leading level, and it only takes about one minute to complete the detection, which is fast and convenient.
Eagle Ray's core product, Airdoc-AIFUNDUS (1.0), is the first AI-based retinal image recognition auxiliary diagnostic product to obtain the Class III medical device certificate from the State Food and Drug Administration, which can be used to assist in the diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular abnormalities and the risk of chronic diseases such as anemia, retinal vascular abnormalities, vitreous abnormalities, retinal tumors, optic neuropathy, macular degeneration, and congenital retinal anomalies.
In addition to AI image recognition of the fundus retina, Eagle Eye is also actively empowering new tracks and seeking new increments. Recently, Eagle Eye Technology has added a myopia prevention and control track.
In the past year, Eagle Eye Technology has launched therapeutic products such as myopia prevention and control AI products and visual training AI by focusing on the strategic deployment of diagnosis and treatment integration, realizing the effective management of eye health from the prevention, correction and control of myopia.
The product quality is guaranteed, and Eagle Eye Technology is very impressive in terms of revenue and coverage of people.
According to the financial report data, in the past year, Eagle Pupil Eye Health's revenue increased from RMB 43.6 million to RMB 75 million, a growth rate of 71.9%. At the same time, the number of users of myopia prevention and control AI products has reached 890,300, and the number of users of vision training AI products has reached 918,400, and the number of users of vision training AI products has covered more than 800 hospitals across the country.
It can be said that Eagle Eye Technology has enabled more scene applications in the fields of early screening and management of chronic diseases, myopia prevention and control, etc.
Second, the coverage of basic medical institutions has accelerated, with an annual growth rate of more than 10 times
Lack of health awareness has long been a common problem. Most Chinese do not pay enough attention to minor diseases, and by the time they are discovered, it is usually too late, causing irreparable regrets. According to the National Health Commission, chronic noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) account for 88% of all deaths in mainland China.
Therefore, primary medical care is the "gatekeeper" of people's health. However, in fact, there has been a serious shortage of primary healthcare resources, and primary healthcare institutions have been a neglected role.
According to the 2022 Statistical Communiqué on the Development of Health Undertakings in the Mainland, nearly 980,000 of the more than 1.03 million medical and health institutions in the country are primary medical and health institutions.
Therefore, only by improving the level of primary medical and health services and allowing new technologies to serve the grassroots can medical artificial intelligence give full play to its value.
In order to change this situation, Eagle Eye Technology is committed to empowering medical institutions through artificial intelligence to solve the problem of disparity in doctor-patient ratio and shortage of medical resources. Eagle Eye Medical's solutions mainly meet the clinical needs of testing and auxiliary diagnosis of certain indications, and provide many quantitative measurement indicators to facilitate doctors to improve the efficiency and quality of diagnosis and treatment.
According to the financial report data, in 2023, Eagle Eye Technology will cover 1,221 primary medical institutions, a year-on-year increase of 1,271.9%, and the number of tests will reach 536,000, a year-on-year increase of 640.6%.
In terms of technology, Eagle Eye Technology is also continuing to increase R&D investment, develop more medical AI products that meet clinical value, and explore multi-dimensional commercialization models.
In July 2023, Eagle Eye participated in the formulation of the "Expert Consensus on the Application of Artificial Intelligence Technology to Assess the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Based on Fundus Images", which has the advantages of real-time, non-invasive, easy operation and low cost compared with traditional artificial ICVD assessment methods.
In 2023, we will even work with Peking University and a number of well-known institutions to tackle the problem of how to detect Alzheimer's disease early, and the commercialization of this technology has broad prospects and is expected to benefit more users.
Early detection of dementia not only helps to reduce healthcare costs, but also reduces the burden on society.
Eagle Pupil and Chinese Life Property Insurance jointly launched the first domestic special disease insurance product that can be insured even if you have Alzheimer's disease, which takes retinal AI screening service as a value-added service, including providing the insured population with Alzheimer's disease risk assessment intervention and health management, and providing a new complete health protection program. To a certain extent, this will improve the public's awareness of health management and reduce the dilemma of the shortage of national medical resources.
In October 2023, the Conference on Medical Image Computing (2023), the most internationally recognized and influential academic conference in the field of medical image analysis, was held in Vancouver, Canada.
All kinds of data show that Eagle Eye Technology has been continuously investing in the technology in the field of medical AI.
Third, we should adhere to long-termism and promote globalization with fruitful results
With the continuous breakthrough of artificial intelligence technology in medical applications, it has received more and more attention.
However, the medical industry has always been a professional field, and the verticality of medical AI is also very high, and "medical + AI" can continue to achieve breakthrough development, mainly due to a large amount of high-quality data as the foundation, and after a long infrastructure construction cycle.
From the very beginning, Eagle Eye Technology has positioned itself as an AI healthcare company that "makes health everywhere". Over the years, it has always insisted on continuously cultivating the field of AI medical imaging, so it has accumulated rich experience and first-mover advantages in technology.
At the same time, in addition to consolidating its technical strength, Eagle Eye Technology is also improving its production capacity. In 2022, Eagle Eye Technology will build a second manufacturing base in Changsha, Hunan. Today, the plant is in operation and has an annual production capacity of around 100,000 fundus cameras.
After occupying a place in the domestic market, Eagle Eye Technology is also actively deploying overseas markets, gradually developing its business to the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa and other countries and regions.
In the past two years, the Airdoc-AIFUNDUS (1.0) has received regulatory approvals or registrations in Indonesia, Vietnam, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia, while the portable fundus camera has received regulatory approvals and registrations in Indonesia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Thailand.
This year, Eagle Pupil's globalization has taken another step forward.
On January 8, Eagle Eye announced that its Airdoc-AIFUNDUS (1.0) has obtained the CE mark ("CE MDR") stipulated in the Medical Device Regulation, which allows full entry into 27 EU countries, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, France, etc.
It is worth mentioning that at the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva held in April last year, Eagle Eye Technology's portable fundus camera and myopia treatment products won the "Gold Award of Special Recognition".
According to the financial report, in the past year, Eagle Eye Technology's revenue from overseas increased by 496% year-on-year to RMB 9.2 million, accounting for 4.5% of the total revenue during the reporting period.
epilogue
Since ancient times, the progress of science and technology has had both theoretical and experimental schools.
Over the past year, AI has continued to shake the tech landscape. However, we have to admit that there are still deficiencies in the application of AI to change the way of human existence.
Putting AI on the ground is the balance between business and technology.
We have seen that in the past year, Eagle Pupil's coverage of outlets and the number of people served have increased several times or tenfold, and the changes brought about by this technology, as well as the technical feedback brought by in-depth service to patients, may be the best way to combine AI and medical care.