- Couldn't go to Specsavers (Image: Smartvisionlabs.com)
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The World Health Organization estimates that 246 million people have poor vision. Of these, about 90 per cent live in low-income areas without good access to healthcare or expensive diagnostic machines.
To solve this problem Smart Vision Labs has combined two tools often used for eye tests into a single inexpensive and portable device. The first tool, an autorefractor, calculates whether someone is short-sighted or long-sighted, and to what extent, by measuring the size and shape of their eye. The second, an aberrometer, looks for distortions in how light reflects off the eye, which could indicate rarer problems such as double vision.
This equipment usually costs thousands of dollars, but Smart Vision Labs says it has made a device with the same functions that clips onto an iPhone. It can estimate vision problems by taking a handful of pictures of a person's eye and using software to analyse them. The company plans to sell it as part of a low-cost kit for people in developing countries.
"Anyone can use it," says Yaopeng Zhou, one of the firm's co-founders, who is presenting the device this week at Vision Expo in Las Vegas. "We see this as a great way of changing the way people get their eyeglasses."
Earlier this year, Smart Vision Labs sent prototypes to Haiti and Guatemala through non-profit organisation Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity. Optometrists tested the device on a few dozen patients in each country, asking them to look into it and focus on a small red dot for several seconds.
Fitting people for glasses is important, but it is only half of the battle, says Joshua Silver of the Centre for Vision in the Developing World in Oxford, UK. "What use is there to the prescription if you haven't got a means of fulfilling it?" he says. He is currently designing cheap, adjustable glasses to address the problem.
People who used the device in the field were impressed with it. "It was very helpful to have the technology available to us in Haiti," says Elizabeth Groetken, an optometrist from Le Mars, Iowa. "I can see the benefit of this tool in countries that do not have eye care readily available."
This article appeared in print under the headline "iPhone eye test spots vision problems cheaply"
Correction, 19 September 2014: When this article was first published, it cited a mistaken price for the testing kit.