Continuity
When a company stops supporting an implant, the people wearing it do not stop needing it. Continuity keeps abandoned devices working, keeps their software safe, and pays for a replacement when nothing else can be done.
- Since
- 2020
- Devices supported
- SEIRAN 2 (Kiroshi Opticals), Corvid (Raven Microcybernetics), Halcyon V (Dynalar Optics) and Iris 1 (Ono-Sendai)
- Firmware in escrow
- Three of the four. The rights to the Iris 1 firmware were bought at auction in 2018 and the owner has declined.
- Where
- Clinics and repair partners in Japan, the United States, Canada and the Philippines, and by post
- FY2025 spending
- ¥1.48 billion (about US$9.7 million), 6% of charitable spending
- Programme lead
- Yusuf Oduya, San Francisco
Orphaned devices
An optical implant is a medical device, a computer and a subscription. When its maker stops making spare parts, stops issuing firmware updates or goes out of business, the device keeps working for a while. Then a battery fails, or a certificate expires, or a fault appears that nobody is left to fix. The wearer, who may have no sight without it, is on their own.
We call these orphaned devices, and there are more of them every year. The largest group are wearers of the SEIRAN 2, which Kiroshi Opticals stopped selling in 2019 and stopped supporting in 2024. About 41,000 people were fitted with one. The company offered wearers a discount on a replacement; a replacement means surgery, and many wearers did not want it, could not afford it or could not have it for medical reasons.
Continuity exists because we thought the company’s largest shareholder should not leave those people to work it out alone. It now supports wearers of four device families, from four makers, three of which no longer exist.
What we do
- Repairs and batteries. Through repair partners and the aftercare clinics, free to wearers. The programme keeps a spares library of parts bought from makers’ remaining stock, recovered from explanted devices with the donor’s consent, or made new from published drawings.
- Firmware escrow. We negotiate with makers, or with whoever owns the rights after them, to place each device’s firmware and documentation with an independent archive, so that engineers can maintain it after the maker has gone. Since 2024 that archive has been Frothly’s Lazarus programme.
- Open documentation. We fund engineers to document unsupported devices and publish what they learn, under licences that let any clinic use it.
- A replacement fund. For wearers whose devices cannot be repaired, a grant towards a replacement of the wearer’s choice, from any maker, with surgery and rehabilitation.
- Advice. A support line in Japanese and English, and legal advice for wearers of devices from makers that have been dissolved.
Outcomes
Every person helped is a person whose device would otherwise have failed with nobody to fix it.
| Year | People helped | Repairs | Batteries replaced | Replacements funded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2021 | 2,904 | 1,388 | 1,940 | 41 |
| FY2022 | 4,618 | 2,206 | 3,512 | 87 |
| FY2023 | 6,931 | 3,470 | 5,604 | 164 |
| FY2024 | 9,457 | 4,980 | 7,725 | 258 |
| FY2025 | 11,870 | 6,412 | 9,880 | 341 |
People helped: individual wearers who received a repair, a battery, a firmware fix, a replacement grant or legal advice during the year. Some received more than one.
By 31 March 2026 the programme had helped 8,904 of the roughly 41,000 people fitted with a SEIRAN 2. Wearers who come back each year for a battery check are counted in each year’s total.
Source: Continuity programme records.
Recent grants
| Grant | Grantee | Amount | Awarded |
|---|---|---|---|
| KF-2026-0090 Replacement parts made new from published drawings (continuation) | Right to Repair Optics Project United States | ¥65 million | 5 August 2026 |
| KF-2026-0050 Repairs and batteries for wearers of discontinued implants in Vancouver | Pacific Implant Repair Cooperative Canada | ¥16.1 million | 26 May 2026 |
| KF-2025-0446 Repairs and batteries for wearers of discontinued implants in Los Angeles (continuation) | Los Angeles Implant Aftercare Clinic United States | ¥50.5 million | 18 March 2026 |
| KF-2025-0341 Replacement parts made new from published drawings (second phase) | Right to Repair Optics Project United States | ¥80.6 million | 14 December 2025 |
| KF-2025-0277 Reverse engineering the Halcyon V controller, published as open documentation (continuation) | Pacific Implant Repair Cooperative Canada | ¥23.9 million | 12 October 2025 |
| KF-2025-0210 Repairs and batteries for wearers of discontinued implants in Chicago | Northside Implant Clinic United States | ¥17.7 million | 22 August 2025 |
All 46 grants in this programme
Stories
- “They told me to upgrade. People used to say that about my car”Oakland, California · 10 February 2026
Programme lead: Yusuf Oduya, San Francisco. Questions about this programme: programmes@kiroshi.org.