Dr. Euan Allen stared at optical components covering his workbench. Mirrors salvaged from labs. Lenses borrowed from colleagues. A photonic chip was obtained free of charge from a foundry. And a hypothesis that seemed impossible: compress £30,000-100,000 hospital equipment onto something smaller than a £1 coin.

Traditional Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)—the gold standard for diagnosing eye disease—required large systems that occupied entire desks. But they cost tens of thousands of pounds. Required controlled clinical environments. Left millions without access.

Over 600,000 UK patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) need frequent monitoring every 4-12 weeks. But NHS ophthalmology couldn’t keep up. Months-long wait times. Disease progressing between appointments.

Allen and co-founder Dr. Alasdair Price believed integrated photonics could change everything. They built the proof-of-concept for under £20,000 in Allen’s home. It worked.

This is why Siloton, a Bristol, UK-based health technology startup, has won the 2026 Global Recognition Award for developing photonic chip-based OCT systems that achieved the world’s first sub-surface image of a living human retina using chip-based technology—enabling compact, affordable home monitoring for 600,000+ UK patients (20+ million globally). Founded in 2020, Siloton raised £1.7 million in funding, developed the Akepa™ chip integrating 300+ optical/electronic elements, achieving 70% on-chip OCT, and secured three patents.

Technical Innovation and Architecture

Traditional OCT systems represent optical engineering marvels—and logistical nightmares. Mirrors. Lenses. Beam splitters. Each is precisely aligned. Light travels through air between components. Vibrations misalign optics. Temperature changes cause drift.

The systems cost £30,000-100,000. Occupy entire desks. This creates a chronic shortage worldwide.

Siloton‘s Akepa™ chip completely changes the physics. Over 300 optical and electronic elements are integrated onto silicon—70% of the entire OCT system is on-chip. Light travels through etched waveguides—microscopic pathways—instead of through air. No mirrors to align. No mechanical drift. No fragility.

Silicon photonics fabrication etches optical pathways using the same semiconductor manufacturing that makes computer chips. Everything microscopic. Everything solid-state. Everything mass-producible.

The chip was fabricated in a commercial foundry—a clear route to high-volume manufacturing. The Redfield™ proprietary component library provides building blocks optimized for OCT.

March 2023: Siloton captured a sub-surface image of a synthetic eye retina—world leader in commercial photonic chip OCT.

November 2024: The breakthrough. First sub-surface image of a living human retina using chip-based OCT. First commercial organization achieving this. Clinical readiness validated.

Three granted patents protect: on-chip compensation for retinal distance variation, an optimal optical structure that maintains signal quality. At the same time, miniaturizing and binocular imaging without doubling components—single device screens both eyes.

The capabilities this unlocks: Compact desktop, handheld, or wearable formats. Affordability through semiconductor manufacturing, reducing costs from tens of thousands to potentially hundreds. Robustness eliminates fragile optics. Scalability through foundry production volumes.

Market Strategy and Leadership

Dr. Alasdair Price (CEO) brings rare commercialization expertise. Commercialisation and Technology Development Lead at the University of Bristol. Not just technical knowledge—but customer needs, market sizing, IP strategy, revenue paths.

Dr. Euan Allen (Co-Founder) provides technical depth. PhD in Integrated and Quantum Optics for Sensing. Deep photonic chip design expertise.

The founding story demonstrates capital efficiency: a £20,000 proof-of-concept built in Allen’s home. Free chip negotiated from the foundry. Proved feasibility before raising capital. Attracted investors with results, not promises.

Funding progression: 2022: £470,000. October 2024: £860,000 from Evenlode Foundation, South East Angels, Francis Crick Institute, Innovate UK. Total: £1.7 million, achieving a world-first in human retina imaging.

Institute of Physics validation: 2023 Clifford Paterson Medal & Prize to Price and Allen “for developing and commercialising a world-leading integrated photonics platform for optical coherence tomography.” Institute of Physics Business Start-Up Award for a personal OCT system to prevent AMD-related sight loss.

Cathy Yelf, CEO of the Macular Society (a national sight loss charity), endorsed Siloton’s technology.

Strategic positioning: Blue-ocean strategy. Not competing with Zeiss, Heidelberg Engineering, or Topcon for hospital replacement and targeting unserved markets: home monitoring, primary care, rural/low-resource settings.

Product launches approaching: OCT-Chip Development Kits for medical device OEMs—proprietary ophthalmic OCT system for clinical deployment.

Industry Impact and Future Vision

The statistics reveal the crisis: 600,000+ UK AMD patients. 20+ million globally. The most common cause of sight loss in developed countries is. Frequent monitoring is vital. But OCT access is limited to hospitals.

NHS ophthalmology: Busiest outpatient specialty. Months-long wait times. Patients risk disease progression between appointments. The bottleneck: £30,000-100,000 systems occupying entire desks.

Siloton compresses this onto material smaller than a £1 coin. 70% on-chip. 300+ integrated elements.

Semiconductor manufacturing reduces costs from tens of thousands to potentially hundreds or low thousands. Widespread deployment is viable.

Home monitoring transforms care: Elderly patients. Mobility-limited individuals. Rural residents. Working people are unable to take frequent time off, and democratizing access to sight-saving technology is essential.

Beyond ophthalmology, the platform expands to include Cardiology for intravascular OCT. Dermatology for skin cancer detection. Oncology for tumor margin assessment.

The current OCT chronic shortage disproportionately affects underserved populations—rural areas, low-income countries, and communities lacking specialists. Siloton brings hospital-grade diagnostic capability within arm’s reach.

For patients: Early detection. Timely intervention. Prevented irreversible vision loss.

For healthcare systems: Reduced clinic burden. Better resource allocation. Improved outcomes at lower cost.

For the world: Potentially millions of preventable blindness cases avoided.

This recognition is for fundamentally democratizing technology that preserves one of humanity’s most precious senses. For exceptional capital efficiency—£20K home-built proof-of-concept achieving world-firsts. For technical brilliance in integrating 300+ elements onto a chip smaller than a £1 coin.

The tabletop became a chip. The hospital became the home. The inaccessible became universal. Welcome to Siloton—winner of the 2026 Global Recognition Award.