CLEVELAND—BioEnterprise announced the winners of the Third Annual Medical Capital Innovation Competition, awarded April 18 at the Global Center for Health Innovation. These winning companies were chosen from a field of 21 U.S. and Canadian competitors creating augmented and virtual reality health care technologies. Vision therapy company Vivid Vision won first place in the Competition’s professional division, and was awarded a $50,000 prize. The San Francisco-based company was founded by James Blaha, a programmer looking for a new kind of treatment for his amblyopia. Vivid Vision uses virtual reality to train amblyopia sufferers’ weaker eye to improve binocular vision.

The company was represented at MCIC by its director of optometry, Brian Dornbos, who described the technology as bringing innovation to a treatment that hasn’t changed for many years, usually requiring use of an eye patch. Dornbos said that Vivid Vision’s technology is now available in 280 vision clinics across four continents.

BioEnterprise is a business formation, recruitment, and acceleration effort designed to grow the Northeast Ohio health care industry. The 21 finalists in the Annual Medical Capital Innovation Competition were chosen from a field of 79 applicant teams from 19 states and 16 countries. For a full list of finalists and judges, visit mcic.bioenterprise.com.