French startup Tilak Healthcare, which is developing video games intended to diagnose and follow-up with chronic diseases, has raised $2.7 million (2.5 million euros) from the iBionext Growth Fund. The fund is part of the French management company iBionext network, which identifies, funds and helps expand healthcare startups. 

Tilak was cofounded with iBionext just last year, and is made up of a team of game professionals and medical experts who are working to create prescribable, therapeutic mobile games to diagnose and assess a number of chronic conditions.

The first game is designed to screen for eye diseases by monitoring the visual parameters of the macula – the area near the center of the retina that is responsible for high-acuity vision. Featuring a series of puzzles the patient works through on a mobile device, the app monitors the visual parameters of their macula and generates notifications for the physician on remote platform.

“At Tilak, we are proud to adapt the power of videogames and entertainment to healthcare, thanks to our very distinctive positioning in the digital health world,” Edouard Gasser, CEO of Tilak Healthcare, said in a statement. “With the support of iBionext Growth Fund, we’ll make mobile gaming a great healthcare tool.”

Ultimately, Tilak wants to create an ecosystem of medical games to make screening for an even preventing several chronic conditions. Similar to companies in the United States like Akili Interactive or Pear Therapeutics, the company wants to blends medicine with computer science to offer a digital therapeutic to large patient populations. To be a true medical device, however, company will have to pursue regulatory clearance (or form a strategic partnership that could bypass the need), but neither Tilak or iBionext have mentioned where they currently are in this requirement. Tilak is, however, working in partnership with a few medical and research institutions to validate the product, including the Institut de la Vision, the Quinze-Vings National Opthalmology Hospital, and StreetLab, Quize-Vinges business consultation division.

“We strongly believe in Tilak Healthcare’s potential. The complete recruitment of the team marks the acceleration of the deployment of Tilak’s platform towards doctors and patients; it shows positive signals for our investment,” Alexia Perouse, CEO of iBionext Growth Fund said in a statement. “The alliance of videogames and medicine offers great potential to make Tilak Healthcare a leader in therapeutic mobile games.”