ARK’s OREUM Turns Eye Scans Right into a Window on Well being

It’d sound shocking, however a fast take a look at your eyes can inform docs way over whether or not you want glasses. The retina is filled with tiny blood vessels and nerve fibers — and people act like mirrors of your general well being.

Modifications in retinal blood circulation can trace at heart problems. Delicate harm to those vessels might level to power kidney issues. Even imbalances in your autonomic nervous system — the physique’s stress and restoration management — can present up in retinal patterns and associated information.

By coaching its AI on huge datasets that hyperlink eye photographs with whole-body circumstances, OREUM turns a easy eye picture right into a multi-organ well being examine. What used to require blood work, CT scans, and specialist visits can now begin with one non-invasive snapshot of your eyes. That’s enabled by the ability of AI and machine studying to extract patterns as soon as too complicated to see.

On the coronary heart of OREUM lies a complicated AI engine skilled on lots of of hundreds of medical photographs, collected and validated by Pusan National University Hospital. Not like conventional convolutional neural networks that require coaching whole fashions from scratch, ARK’s algorithm focuses on “bottleneck” layers, making it each sooner and extra environment friendly. These are components of the neural networks that matter essentially the most.

In follow, this implies a nurse or main care doctor can seize a retinal picture with a fundus digicam, and OREUM’s AI immediately analyzes it for indicators not solely of eye illness but additionally of coronary heart and kidney issues. Outcomes are delivered in minutes, accompanied by visualizations and plain-language explanations for sufferers.

[quote text=”Your Eyes Reveal the State of Your Heart and Kidneys” align=”center”]

Historically, diagnosing cardiovascular or kidney illness requires a number of separate assessments, similar to blood work, CT scans, and specialist consultations. OREUM disrupts that course of by extracting predictive indicators instantly from retinal photographs, considerably lowering the variety of procedures whereas sustaining scientific accuracy. The platform additionally integrates with hospital PACS programs via ARK-Bridge, a gateway that converts varied file sorts into DICOM format, simplifying information administration throughout clinics and hospitals.

The system builds on the truth that the retina is a “window” to the physique’s blood vessels and nerves. By analyzing retinal photographs, OREUM’s AI can spot microvascular and structural patterns that correlate with issues in different organs. For instance, sufferers with power kidney illness or cardiovascular points usually present delicate, constant adjustments in retinal vessels. Equally, autonomic nervous system imbalances might be detected via variations in eye-related information mixed with HRV (coronary heart price variability) measures.

The impression is twofold. For sufferers, OREUM saves time, lowers prices, and permits earlier interventions. For healthcare suppliers, it creates new income streams by enabling main care docs to carry out screenings that after required specialists. Studies are designed to be easy sufficient for nurses to make use of whereas nonetheless providing the depth specialists count on, guaranteeing easy adoption in busy medical environments.

Sooner or later, ARK envisions OREUM reaching past hospitals and clinics. The corporate is exploring methods to deploy its platform in opticians’ places of work, the place sufferers already go for normal imaginative and prescient checks or to purchase glasses. By integrating power illness screening into these on a regular basis visits, OREUM may make early detection extra handy and accessible. This method lowers limitations for sufferers who may keep away from hospital visits till signs grow to be extreme, turning a routine eye examination right into a gateway for broader preventive healthcare.

Based in 2018, ARK Inc. grew out of the Biomedical Analysis Institute at Pusan Nationwide College Hospital. Led by CEO Kim Hyung-hoe and a workforce of ophthalmology consultants, the corporate has already dropped at market AI instruments for retinal illness detection, now deployed in additional than 1,000 medical establishments. ARK just lately signed a distribution settlement with Daewoong Pharmaceutical, one in every of Korea’s largest pharmaceutical firms, to scale gross sales nationwide.

With OREUM, ARK is setting its sights on world markets. The corporate has secured CE and ISO certifications, paving the best way for entry into Southeast Asia and Europe, the place demand for accessible power illness care is rising quickly. Exhibitions at CES 2026 and MEDICA 2026 in Germany will mark the platform’s worldwide debut.

If profitable, OREUM may remodel how we detect and handle power ailments—bringing specialist-level insights into main care clinics, and making early, built-in analysis the brand new commonplace in world healthcare.

Filed in Medical. Learn extra about CES, CES 2026, Healthcare and Korea.