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PhotoniCare CEO, Ryan Shelton, Wins NWA Pitch Competition

The Northwest Arkansas Tech Summit declared Ryan Shelton, CEO and Co-founder of PhotoniCare, as winner of the pitch competition.

The Northwest Arkansas Tech Summit describes itself as “An Event and a Community dedicated to convening thought leaders with diverse perspectives on all things tech”.

PhotoniCare developed the Otosight, a first-in-class, FDA-cleared tool to directly visualize the middle ear without surgery that enables pediatric, family medicine, and urgent care clinicians to immediately and accurately visualize the presence of fluid in the middle ear and characterize that fluid.

“Our innovation arose from my own frustrations with my own child’s struggle with ear infections and we look forward to making a real impact on the quality of care for kids across the world.”

– Ryan Shelton, CEO and Co-Founder

About PhotoniCare

Founded in 2013, PhotoniCare’s mission is to improve clinical outcomes and serve the unmet patient and provider needs by translating novel light-based technologies into objective medical practice. The FDA-cleared OtoSight^TM Middle Ear Scope was developed by PhotoniCare to eliminate subjectivity by providing users with a non-invasive and comprehensive assessment of middle ear fluid, even in the presence of earwax. PhotoniCare has developed a patented imaging platform that provides growth opportunities beyond otology.

PhotoniCare has been recognized by numerous organizations, winning the 2021 Northwest Arkansas Tech Summit Pitch Competition, the 2018 MedTech Innovator Execution Award, and the 2018 AdvaMed Accel Virginia Shimer Rybski Memorial Award. The company was also a member of the 2016 Dreamit Ventures accelerator program and took first place at the 7th Annual Insight Product Development 2019 HealthTECH Startup Competition. PhotoniCare has received more than $6 million in support from the National Institutes of Health, most recently a Phase SBIR II award for work in artificial intelligence. In 2015, PhotoniCare was the winner of a grant from the National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Device Innovation (NCC-PDI), an FDA-funded consortium led by Children’s National Hospital.