Verana Health and Sight Sciences, Inc. announced a research collaboration designed to provide insights that may lead to improved outcomes for patients with primary open-angle glaucoma. Sight Sciences will leverage Verana Health'sQdata® Glaucoma RWD module to evaluate various facets of its OMNI® Surgical System a minimally invasive, implant-free glaucoma procedure that uniquely addresses all three known points of resistance in the aqueous outflow system: the trabecular meshwork, Schlemm's canal and the collector channels. Intraocular Pressure (IOP) is the only known modifiable risk factor for glaucoma, and OMNI enables surgeons to reduce IOP while avoiding more aggressive surgical interventions or foreign body implants associated with legacy minimally invasive glaucoma surgery (MIGS) procedures.

OMNI is indicated for canaloplasty followed by trabeculotomy, and can be used before, in combination with, or following cataract surgery. Glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness worldwide, is a group of eye disorders that have few symptoms in their early stages but can eventually lead to damage of the optic nerve, resulting in vision loss or complete blindness. POAG is the most common form of glaucoma in the U.S., impacting 2.7 million Americans.

While patients with POAG initially may not experience symptoms, eventually they lose their peripheral vision. Left untreated, POAG can cause a person to go blind. Powered by real-world glaucoma data curated from the American Academy of Ophthalmology (Academy) IRIS® Registry (Intelligent Research in Sight), Qdata Glaucoma is the only data module that captures the full, real-world glaucoma patient journey.

This fit-for-purpose data module offers curated data for: More than 5 million de-identified patients with linked closed claims, More than 341,000 glaucoma patients who received MIGS procedures, MIGS procedure details and IOP readings, An average of 2.9 years follow-up for glaucoma patients. The IRIS Registry is one of the largest specialty society clinical data registries in all of medicine and the first comprehensive eye disease clinical registry in the U.S. Launched in 2014, it is amassed from more than 540 million patient visits, more than 75 million unique de-identified patients, more than 60 electronic health records systems (EHRs) and more than 16,000 clinicians and other eye care providers in their practices across the U.S. Verana Health is the Academy's exclusive end-to-end data curation and analytics partner for the IRIS Registry. Shared CPT codes and the narrowness of the captured information make it exceedingly difficult for researchers to identify specific MIGS devices used through medical claims data alone.

However, Verana Health's access to comprehensive patient journey information and advanced analytics allowed Sight Sciences to gain valuable insight into real-world, long-term evidence. In addition, the curated database includes de-identified patient outcomes data (such as IOP) that can't be found anywhere else.