Azalea Vision Awarded Prestigious EIC Accelerator Funding To Advance Smart Contact Lens Into Clinical Development

GHENT, Belgium, July 2 (Bernama) -- Azalea Vision, a Belgian healthtech company building the first medical-grade smart contact lens, today announced it has been selected for the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator, the European Union’s flagship program for breakthrough, market-creating deep tech. Azalea is the only Belgian company selected in this round and will receive up to €7.5 million, including a non-dilutive €2.5 million grant and a planned €5 million equity investment from the EIC Fund, to advance its medical-grade smart contact lens platform into clinical development.

Beyond the funding, the award is a strong external endorsement of Azalea’s technology and long-term vision. Built on its proprietary smart contact lens platform, Azalea’s smart lens is designed to improve the quality of life of the millions of people living with irregular corneas, higher-order aberrations and presbyopia. The same device also opens the door to a biosensing platform that can measure a broad range of biomarkers in tears, one of the body’s purest fluids. The EIC’s endorsement marks it as one of the most promising medical-device opportunities emerging from Europe.