A new smartphone app could be used to quickly and easily test one's vision.
Peek (the Portable Eye Examination Kit) can provide comprehensive eye testing anywhere in the world, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine reported.
There are 285 million suffering from visual impairment across the globe, and 80 percent of these cases are caused by diseases that are preventable or curable. The problem is the majority of these individuals come from low-income counties with limited access to medical technology. Peek could be the solution to this problem by providing low-cost and portable eye exams.
The app was tested on 233 people, who then received another exam in an eye clinic based in Kenya. The study revealed the new technology was just as effective as a standard paper-based charts and illuminated vision boxes.
"With most of the world's blind people living in low-income countries, it is vital we develop new tools to increase early detection and appropriate referral for treatment. Mobile phone use is now so widespread that it seemed to be an ideal platform," said Andrew Bastawrous, Lecturer in International Eye Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and co-founder of Peek. "In this study we aimed to develop and validate a smartphone-based visual acuity test for eyesight which would work in challenging circumstances, such as rural Africa, but also provide reliable enough results to use in routine clinical practice in well-established healthcare systems."
Peek consists of a series of apps and uses hardware called Peek Retina; this study focuses on the Peek Retina app, which tests clarity of vision. It uses a "tumbling E" on a screen displayed in one of four orientations. The patient is asked to point in the direction they see the E's arms as pointing towards, and the tester relays that information to the phone.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.
