optometry
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The $10 Frame That Made Vision Benefits Look Absurd
A factory visit exposed the gap between what glasses cost to make and what Americans paid. XP Health turned that gap into an employer benefit built around clear prices, online shopping, and local eye care.
Sixteen Software Companies, One Front Desk
PracticeTek has spent five years buying the software that runs America's dentists, orthodontists, chiropractors and dermatologists. Now more than 40,000 practices log in through its brands - and most patients never learn its name.
The Eyewear Chain That Turned a Mall Counter Into Malaysia’s Vision-Care Network
Focus Point sells frames and lenses, but its larger bet is that the optical shop can become the front door to preventive eye care. More than 200 stores, an expanding clinical toolkit and a knack for serving different budgets have turned one small counter into a national network.
VSP Vision
VSP Vision is the largest not-for-profit vision benefits and eye care company in the United States, founded in 1955 by a group of Northern California optometrists who pioneered the idea of prepaid vision insurance. Headquartered in Rancho Cordova, California, VSP now operates a vertically integrated portfolio spanning vision insurance, eyewear brands (Marchon, Altair, Marcolin), lens technology (VSP Optics), retail (Visionworks, Eyeconic), and practice-management software (Eyefinity). Backed by roughly 85 million members and a network of tens of thousands of independent eye doctors, the company frames its mission as empowering human potential through sight, and funds one of the industry's largest charitable arms, VSP Eyes of Hope.
Eyebot
Eyebot builds contactless, self-serve AI vision-testing kiosks that deliver a doctor-verified eyeglass prescription in about 90 seconds - no appointment, insurance, or optometrist visit required. Placed in malls, pharmacies, and retail vision centers, the roughly five-foot kiosks measure refraction with touch-free infrared technology while licensed tele-doctors review and approve each prescription. Founded in Boston in 2021 by optics engineer Matthias Hofmann, the company aims to make vision care as easy as buying shoes, and has raised roughly $29.6M including a $20M Series A led by General Catalyst.
Vivid Vision
Vivid Vision is a San Francisco medical technology company that turns virtual reality headsets into tools for vision care. Founded in 2014 by programmer James Blaha, who built the first prototype to treat his own lazy eye, the company started with VR games for amblyopia and strabismus and now runs two lines: a clinical and at-home vision therapy suite used in clinics across 50+ countries, and Vivid Vision Perimetry (VVP), a VR-based visual field test being adopted as a digital endpoint in pharmaceutical clinical trials for glaucoma, AMD, and geographic atrophy.
PlenOptika
PlenOptika is a Cambridge, Massachusetts medical device company that makes QuickSee, a handheld autorefractor that measures a person's eyeglass prescription in about ten seconds using wavefront aberrometry and machine-learning algorithms. Spun out of the Madrid-MIT M+Vision fellowship in 2014, the company set out to close the gap on uncorrected refractive error, a problem affecting more than a billion people worldwide. Its portable, clinic-quality device has been used by vision professionals and NGOs on over 5 million patients in more than 45 countries - and even flew aboard SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission as the first handheld autorefraction device used in space.
EyeQue Corporation
EyeQue Corporation is a Newark, California digital-health company that turns an ordinary smartphone into a personal vision-testing lab. Built on optical technology licensed from MIT, its small clip-on devices and apps let people measure their own refractive error, pupillary distance and reading numbers at home for a fraction of the cost of a clinic visit, then use those results to order glasses online. Founded in 2015 by physicist John Serri and Zenni Optical's Tibor Laczay, EyeQue has won multiple CES Innovation Awards and raised more than $57 million to make eye care accessible to people who can't easily reach an eye doctor.
CommuniCare+OLE
CommuniCare+OLE is a nonprofit network of federally qualified health centers serving Napa, Solano, and Yolo counties in Northern California. Formed in 2023 by the merger of OLE Health and CommuniCare Health Centers - two organizations that both opened their doors in 1972 - it delivers comprehensive medical, dental, behavioral health, substance use, nutrition, optometry, and pharmacy care to more than 70,000 patients across 17 sites, regardless of insurance status, immigration status, or ability to pay.