There’s a special sauce in the recipe Ora Inc. uses to run clinical trials for ophthalmology devices and drugs that can reduce the time needed for a study from 6 months to 2 days: The eye care practice started by Ora founder Dr. Mark Abelson.
An ophthalmologist and optometric scientist and fellow at the Mass. Eye & Ear Infirmary, Abelson founded Andover Eye in 1978, his son Stuart Abelson – now Andover, Mass.-based Ora’s CEO – told MassDevice.com.
"His professor at the time, Dr. Claes Dohlman, had given him some advice. If you wanted to do efficient clinical research, it’s easier to do it outside of the hospital environment in private practice. He said, ‘Move up to the North Shore [of Boston], open up a practice, and then you have your patient base to do your clinical research,’ and that’s exactly what he did," Stuart Abelson told us.
"The Andover Eye practice that Dr. Abelson founded really is the cornerstone that makes Ora very unique in the device world," said Ryan Bouchard, director of Ora’s medical device operation. "We utilize that as our window to these subjects. Having this start-to-finish and the total solution is really what differentiates Ora in the space."
Ora grew from the 20-30 workers employed under Dr. Abelson in the late 70s and early 80s to a headcount of roughly 100, Stuart Abelson said. The company pulls in annual revenues of about $50 million, he said.
Abelson’s father created a clinical model called the conjunctival allergen challenge that’s been used to help develop 19 ocular allergy products, Abelson told us.
"It was an important model because it brought a level of control and statistical power to the study of ocular allergy, which had previously been done primarily in environmental studies," he said. "What this allowed for is a very tightly controlled way to do full development, Phase 2 and Phase 3 drug development in the ocular allergy space."