Archive for the ‘MIT Media Lab’ tag
Android Optometry
We’ve commented before about the ability of telemedicine solutions to bring cutting edge technology and quality of care to emerging economies. One example is some of the recent work that the Camera Culture Group from MIT’s Media Lab has done by building a clever optometry solution into an accessory and an application for Android-powered smartphones (HT: Engadget).
The concept is very cool. Many optometrists today use autorefractors, machines which scans the images formed on the back of a patient’s retina to get a rough, but automated, measure on the quality of your vision. Optometrists will then use phoropters to get to a precise enough measure of your eyes as to be able to prescribe lenses for contacts/glasses.
The problem with this approach is that autorefractors and phoropters are too expensive and too time consuming for widespread use in many places around the world. The NETRA solution that the Camera Culture Group came up with was to build an accessory and an application which force a user to make a pair of lines overlap using controls on the phone. Doing this repeatedly lets the application do a calculation similar to what is done by an autorefractor to calculate the quality of the user’s vision in a process which is much faster (several minutes) and cheaper than a standard eye exam (more details in the video and images below)
The project website shows a very compelling table which compares the relative prices and accuracies of optometry solutions in existence today.
It’ll be interesting to see where this technology can go once displays similar to Apple’s Retina Display become cheaper and more prevalent. This example definitely shows the power of telemedicine approaches and is hopefully a harbinger for more equally compelling and innovative solutions for the needs of scientists and doctors around the world.