Photo of José Tomás  Arenas-Cavalli

Biotechnology & medicine

José Tomás Arenas-Cavalli

He has designed an image screening and tele-medical platform to prevent diabetic blindness

Year Honored
2013

Region
Latin America

Hails From
Chile

"Diabetes is one of the most significant health problems worldwide and represents the main cause of blindness in the working population. For this reason, this young engineer and graduate with highest honor from the University of Chile, is committed to reducing the risk of vision loss associated with diabetic retinopathy and to optimize the current health service resources. His aim is to conduct early diagnoses of retinopathy and to weed out the cases of healthy patients that put a strain on the system.

DART, a spin-off from the University of Chile, founded and managed by Arenas since 2012, aspires to consolidate a network for the diagnosis of this illness that, through the automatic processing of digital images and web-based telemedicine, allows for early diagnosis and limits the possibilities of of vision loss and blindness.

José Tomás Arenas was the winner of the Startup Salud competition in 2012. Currently, alongside DART, he is applying his solid knowledge of data mining and pattern recognition to the detection of electrical fraud in Chile."