People around the world now spend hours a day on their smartphones. On average, daily smartphone use exceeds three hours, and for many adults, total screen time climbs to six hours or more, according to research. This constant close-up screen exposure has been linked to a growing list of eye-health issues, including dry and irritated eyes, eye fatigue, blurred vision, headaches, and the worsening of nearsightedness, per reports.
Edenlux, a South Korea–headquartered startup, has developed technology to address eye and ear health issues caused by screen-heavy digital lifestyles.
The company’s mission is personal. Edenlux founder and CEO Sungyong Park knows first-hand what it feels like to lose control of your eyesight. While serving as a military physician, Park received a muscle relaxant injection for severe neck stiffness. It triggered a rare side effect: temporary paralysis of the eye muscles responsible for focusing. Doctors told him there was little to do but wait.
Park didn’t wait. He imported specialized ophthalmic equipment and began retraining his eye muscles himself. Over time, his vision gradually returned. That experience reshaped his understanding of eye health, leading Park, a medical doctor turned entrepreneur, to develop technology to help people protect and restore their vision in a screen-heavy world.
Now, Edenlux is preparing to launch its second wellness device, Eyeary, a daily visual recovery tool aimed at the U.S. market, with a planned Indiegogo launch around the end of March. Unlike medical devices, Edenlux’s products fall under the FDA’s wellness category, allowing them to be described for vision training and general eye health. (The company opted to launch on Indiegogo rather than seek investor funding, Park said, citing sufficient cash reserves to support operations for several years.)
The company’s first product, Otus, launched in 2022 in South Korea, Singapore, Japan, and Taiwan. The bulky, VR-style device uses lenses to contract and relax the ciliary muscle. Otus has generated $10 million in cumulative revenue, and Edenlux says Eyeary is designed to be faster and easier to use.
“With Otus, users typically took about 12 months to reduce their dependence on reading glasses. Eyeary could shorten that to around six months,” Park claimed.
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image credits: edenlux Image Credits:Edenlux
Eyeary is also a design leap, he added. It looks like normal glasses, is lighter and more comfortable and the lens system includes 144 diopter focal points, allowing for finer focus adjustments and more precise eye-muscle training. (Otus has five diopter focal points) The device pairs with a mobile app via Bluetooth, collecting usage data and feeding it to Edenlux’s servers. The company analyzes datasets across age, gender, and vision profiles, using AI to predict improvement timelines and customize training programs.
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