MACULIGHT Wins Healthy Hub 2025 – Health Insurers Pave the Way for Coverage

What Is the Healthy Hub?

The Healthy Hub is an initiative by four statutory health insurance companies in Germany: BIG direkt gesund, IKK Südwest, mhplus Krankenkasse, and SBK Siemens-Betriebskrankenkasse. Since 2018, this annual competition has been identifying innovative digital health solutions that can close gaps in the German healthcare system and make them available to insured persons more quickly.

In the sixth edition of the competition in 2025, five start-ups were selected from a large number of applicants. Each winner is paired with a partner health insurer to develop a pilot project – with the goal of integrating the innovation into statutory health insurance (GKV) coverage. To date, 27 start-ups have been transferred into practice through the Healthy Hub, benefiting over 100,000 insured persons.

MACULIGHT as a Winning Innovation

MACULIGHT by Ciromed was selected as one of the five winners – with BIG direkt gesund and mhplus as partner insurers. The innovation addresses a significant gap in care: dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common form of macular degeneration and affects millions of people in Germany. Until now, there has been no approved therapy for this condition, and photobiomodulation treatment has only been available through time-consuming in-clinic sessions.

MACULIGHT changes this: the portable home therapy device enables painless, digitally monitored photobiomodulation treatment in just a few minutes per session – without the need for regular clinic visits. This represents a significant advance, particularly for patients with limited mobility or those living far from specialized treatment centers.

The MACULIGHT study (DRKS00036803), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is currently investigating the clinical benefit of this home therapy at five specialized centers across Germany.

Voices from the Health Insurers

What Does This Mean for Patients?

The Healthy Hub award is an important milestone on the path to statutory health insurance coverage for photobiomodulation home therapy. Concretely, this means:

For patients currently participating in the MACULIGHT study, the Healthy Hub award confirms that the approach is being taken seriously by the healthcare system. For all other patients with dry AMD, it signals that a new treatment option could become available through statutory health insurance in the foreseeable future.

Outlook: The Path to Coverage

The Healthy Hub award marks the beginning of a structured process toward integration into statutory health insurance. The next steps include the development and implementation of a pilot project with BIG direkt gesund and mhplus, evaluation of the clinical data from the ongoing MACULIGHT study, and – if results are positive – a broader rollout to insured persons of the partner health insurers.

Combined with the FDA authorization of the Valeda Light Delivery System in the USA and the ongoing European studies (EUROLIGHT, LIGHTSITE IIIb), the Healthy Hub award underscores the growing international recognition of photobiomodulation as a treatment approach for dry AMD.

Ciromed will continue to report on developments. Patients interested in the MACULIGHT study can find participating study centers on our website. MACULIGHT Therapy → | Find a Doctor →