BLOG: TearLab rebrands and reboots: Trukera upgrades tear osmolarity testing
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Boy, what a long road TearLab has traveled. It seems like I’ve been talking to them and about them forever. Certainly since 2010.
I clearly remember running into Dr. Michael Lemp, the father of dry eye, and gently debating how one should interpret tear osmolarity (TO) in the real world while we strolled through the exhibits at AAO. My teammates at SkyVision, Scott Schlegel, OD, and Greg Kaye, OD, and I were so early in on TearLab’s science that we were doing testing before it was CLIA-waived and eligible for reimbursement.
I’m pretty sure that poor Duane Morrison still suffers from PTSD from all of the phone calls we had during which I insisted that my interpretation of the results (high, low or asymmetric) was more correct than the original TearLab guidance (positive or negative). In my defense, I wasn’t just picking on poor Duane or disagreeing with chief science officer Ben Sullivan; I was also saying it from the podium, with the likes of Eric Donnenfeld and Bob Osher telling me I was full of it and that TO would never be a useful tool.
I don’t know about Bob’s current position, but Eric has gone on to publish some of the most influential papers on dry eye disease utilizing TO as a meaningful metric, so I’ve got that going for me!
Through the years, TearLab toiled as an independent company, going public early in its lifespan and then being acquired by a private equity (PE) concern a couple of years ago. A new management team took the helm last year, and TearLab recently rebranded as Trukera Medical. New CEO Adam Szaranos is on record that the company is planning to offer therapeutic products as well as new diagnostic modalities across the breadth of corneal health. From what I’ve seen and heard, the PE folks backing the company are on board and ready to provide the financial backing needed for this pivot.
And to prove it, it already has a new product; the ScoutPro instantly makes testing TO more accurate and efficient. No more temperature testing or rushing back to the base unit to insert the “pen” and get a reading. ScoutPro is roughly the same size as the traditional handheld, but it is powered by a rechargeable battery that lasted far longer than a full clinic day in our SkyVision trials. It uses the existing test “cards,” and the result comes up on the monitor in 5 or 6 seconds. You can scroll back to the previous patient’s results if you forgot to record them. ScoutPro fits in the side pocket of scrubs. What once took 3 or 4 minutes is now accomplished in less than 60 seconds. All of our techs were unanimous in their five-star rating and their recommendation: one ScoutPro per workup tech.
If ScoutPro is any indication of what we can expect, Trukera is poised to make significant contributions to our ability to diagnose and treat all things cornea.
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