Slashdot Mirror
Poor Vision? There's an App For That
necro81 writes "Researchers at MIT's Media Lab have developed a smartphone app that allows users to measure how poor their vision is (myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism) and receive a corrective prescription. The user peers through a $2 optical adapter at the screen of a smartphone. The app displays lighted bars, and prompts the user to adjust the display until the bars line up. Repeating this with bars in different locations and orientations allows the vision distortion to be determined to within about 0.4 diopters using a Nexus One. The iPhone 4, with its higher-resolution display, should be able to improve that to 0.28 diopters. This could have broad application in the developing world, where experienced opticians and diagnostic equipment are hard to come by."
Is there an app to bite my shiny metal ass?
The one without smartphones, you mean?
This is great for countries that lack opticians with basic equiptment yet somehow have lots of people with large screened smartphones?
Really wouldn't be easier to get real optical equipment? Sure maybe its a bit more expensive, but if you are heading to third world countries, being able to bring such things would probably be trivial for anyone who knew what they were doing.
Great idea for the developed world too.
I'd like an app like that for Linux so people can test their vision at home, multiple times, and optimize prescriptions for different distances (for example, close work like soldering).
With the availability of an eye test app, people who know their eye health is good can refine their prescription cheaply (buying online instead of getting ass-raped for the same lens/frame combo locally) and save playing eye test/prescription/purchase roulette.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Not only is it great for developing countries. It's great for those of us in countries like the USA, Canada, Easter Europe, and many other places. Health care costs are increasing. It's about time we came up with some ways to make health care cheaper. My province spends half of it's revenue on health care. I would love for them to start using ideas like this to make it possible for lower skilled people who demand less money to give medical care in simple cases such as prescribing glasses, so that doctor's have more time for real important stuff and also so that health care costs would go down. With all the advancements in science it seems that health care is just getting more and more expensive. Really, we should be using those advancements to make it cheap and accessible to all.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Next up, they can tackle basic web design! There's really no reason to stick a 3000 pixel wide image of a group shot onto the page.
That said, this is really cool. This is exactly how technology should be used to help out the developing world.
now that is really really cool - much more impressive to me than a patent on a battery holder. Kudos to the developers, I hope they make something of it !
Maybe this app can help clear up Apple's issue with poor signal strength on their phone. Can't see how many bars you have left? Maybe you need a $2 optical adapter. And look at that -- we've got them for sale in the app store!
Considering that we're all sitting in front of computer screens for 90% of our non-asleep time, and are thus growing into near-sightedness (the long-term adaptation algorithm used for eye growth is adjusting to what it's used for - eyes would never grow to the correct size without any feedback control - though not everyone believes...), it might be quite a handy device to regularly re-check ones own eyes.
I want one.
It's sufficiently precise for that purpose. Final check before buying new glasses to be done by Zeiss' refractometric toy (measures 0.01 diopters, and higher orders of errors than just cylindrical/spherical. Plus, you can glasses that correct them for just based price + 100).
"This could have broad application in the developing world, where experienced opticians and diagnostic equipment are hard to come by"
but Nexus ones and iPhone 4s grow on trees.
Josh Silver already has a better way to correct vision, and at a much cheaper cost too. No need for an optometrist either.
Movie demonstration: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liquid_filled_eyeglasses.html
Text Article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=adjustable-eyeglasses-poor
This will be great to be sure my vision is good while driving. Don't worry, I can multitask.
now that is really really cool - much more impressive to me than a patent on a battery holder. Kudos to the developers, I hope they make something of it !
Agreed, definitely cool, but it does sound a little like cartridge alignment on inkjet printer.
--
Perpenso Calc for iPhone. Classic Scientific and HEX functionality plus RPN, fractions, complex numbers, dotted quads, 32/64-bit signed/unsigned bitwise operations, UTF-8, IEEE FP decode, and RGB decode with color preview.
If you could tie this in with your OS with some useful tools so that it could make a useful profile for your desktop environment based on your visual acuity.
I'm legally blind myself (-23 diopters in both eyes) and I also sometimes help visually impaired kids customise their desktops for better use.
Obviously there's no one size fits all approach and configuring DPI, colour etc; in a UI is a very personal thing but I'm sure this could be of use for PCs and even cellphone user interfaces.
Come on. How many times do you need to check your eyes. And shouldn't somebody do this that has an idea of what they are doing?
...can I sell it for most of what I'd pay for it? Otherwise I'm better of going to America's Best and getting an exam plus two pairs of glasses for $70.
This might actually be interesting if it worked on a computers other than "smartphones" and required no special device.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I thought Apple wouldn't approve stuff like that?
How cost effective is this? Sure it's only a $2 adapter, but then you need a $400-$700 phone to attach it to (that's the actual price of the hardware mentioned, when not subsidized by a long term monthly contract, which costs even more). Surely for $400 someone could build a standalone vision testing device that is more accurate?
sig? uhh, umm, ok
Can I get my health insurance to buy me a shiny new 4g Iphone?
It's no longer possible to get glasses/contacts without a prescription made in the past 12 months. This law went into effect 6 or 7 years ago, after online contact lens stores started appearing in large numbers. Optometrists make a big profit by forcing people to get eye exams once per year in order to get their prescriptions filled. Until that gets rolled back, it doesn't matter whether people can test themselves at home.
But it does sound like a big win for the developing world.
That's an excellent idea.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
That's a fair question to ask.
Particularly for the very young or very old, or anyone with a complex medical history, a diabetic, for example.
Clever idea, also they can made use of built-in accelerometers and gyroscopes for measuring of pulse and blood pressure (with some pump). I hope in future smartphones will be equipped (strictly for usability purposes) with cheap thermometers and maybe even sensors for galvanic skin response metering.
Strange, I didn't know it would be so easy to check for oneself like that. It makes me wonder what else can be done without the need to visit a health specialist.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
A sole traveling, untrained, non-optometrist Peace Corps kid with a box of donated used glasses could bring a box of glasses.
You almost had it there. You did (almost) stumble blindly on it (no pun intended), but still...
1 - Based on the "Developing countries can't be choosers" axiom, it is not really THAT important to people living there if the eyeglasses really fit their prescription 100%.
Particularly, if the glasses are free.
2 - Based on 1, there is a much simpler way of testing for the right prescription under those conditions (choosers not too picky, choice rather limited anyway...).
It consists of the "patient" trying out several sets of glasses until he/she finds the one that works for him/her.
You know, like you would with a pair of sunglasses.
And, based on my own day-to-day observation from what you might call a "developing nation" (Bosnia) that model works perfectly well even for the paying customers.
E.g. people who can't really afford money to visit a private optometrist or they lack time or health insurance for a visit to a government one.
All of those cases mostly resulting from the case of being employed "off the books".
Only thing is... There is really no need for donated eyeglasses cause Chinese ones are dirt cheap.
Like, plastic sunglasses prices. Often sold side by side on the same stand.
Sure, if you have a rather specific need (different prescription for each eye, or a relatively rare case of visual impairment) you are probably not gonna find what you are looking for "over the counter".
Then again, chances of finding EXACTLY what you need in a "box of donated used glasses" with or without an eyePhone (Get it? EYE-PHONE!) are far lower than that.
Oh... and one more thing.
While there are plenty enough iPhones here (just today I saw one "barely used" 3G 16GB being sold for ~320$) - ALL of them are jailbroken.
Also, you can forget using the app store directly from it even if you have somehow gotten your hands on an actual "virgin" iPhone.
Cause even if your iPhone is perfectly legal, with no cracking/jailbreaking attached - your money is no good.
So, that "non-optometrist Peace Corps kid" should better get all his app-needs before going on his "mission of mercy".
If any of those apps need to "call home", well... sucks to be him in the "developing world".
Again, this is one of those inventions that are pitched by people who have either never been outside of a developed "1st world" country, OR who have only ever been to some village in the middle of the African jungle so they base their understanding of every "developing country" on that one experience or on what they see on CNN. Or in the movies.
Invention is then being pitched as intended for developing countries - where in reality there is no demand or need for it.
On the other hand, hypochondriacs and "I_am_my_own_wikipedia-diagnostician"-people will probably love it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Going to the "eye doctor" is so damn expensive.
While HMO plans are a choice people should be able to make, you should look into actual high deductible insurance. Our family of 6 pays $500/mo with a $5500/yr deductible. We pay "out of pocket" by depositing the money into a Health Savings Account (HSA) first, and paying from that. This deducts the expense on the same line as IRA contributions. Fully funding the HSA for the deductible, plus the premiums, is about the cost of HMO coverage with the same exclusions and tax benefits. BUT, if we don't spend the entire deductible from the HSA, the balance stays in the account which can be used for non-covered expenses (e.g. our plan doesn't cover dental) or saved for retirement (it can be used like an IRA after retirement age). Notice that if you hit the deductible (which our daughter did last year by breaking two fingers), your total premium plus "out of pocket" expense is about the same as HMO premiums.
One nasty aspect of the current Obamacare bill is phasing out HSA accounts by 2015 ("forcing" people to buy HMO coverage similarly to how people are "forced" to use public schools because of the tax induced expense of private school).
"I see FOUR BARS!"
(I had a hard time deciding whether to post this in the iPhone signal strength thread instead, but it's probably already been done.)
Like lobotomy, amputations, various forms of self-medication, minor surgical foreign body removal, amateur dentistry...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Something along the lines of phones, eyes and Apple's tendency to name their products by sticking a vowel in front of another word.
Can't quite put my finger on it though.
o-Phone? i-Ris-Phone? pho-O-pil?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Yeah but is there a Sub for that? mmm...
For "developing world" read "we're too shit scared to try this in the domestic market so will run a backdoor field trial and hope it gets enough attention to launch back home". It's the same with gutless politicians and academics. They don't have the balls to take on domestic interests or want to get some brownie points for patronising the poor. Take a look at Microsoft's feeble attempts to capture the mobile phone market or the One Laptop Per Child bollocks. They're all risk averse chicken shit unimaginative patronising wankers.
Yeah! How dare they try and help the poor in third world countries!
If you think slashdotting the Honduran ambassador with some "please help to get this aid shipment cleared" emails might help with that container of computers, provide some more details. To me, it sorta seems like someone in that customs area has his hand out for a "consultation and redtape/paperwork" fee to get it through.
WTF you talking about? Go to glassyeyes.com. I bought my formerly $800 pair of titanium bendy frame blended bifocals for $60 from zennioptical.com. And for the first time in my life, I had an accurately filled prescription - fucking opticians had never got the segment height right.
Where do you slashtards come from?
I suspect that the cost of optical equipment required to reach the level of accuracy and durability of this app, the phone, and its $2 adapter, is much less than the professional equipment opticians currently use.
My droid has a nice camera but you wouldn't expect a professional photographer to use one as his primary tool. I suspect this scenario is similar.
For the optical wizards out there, what would it take to make
eyeglasses that can correct extreme myopia without changing
the magnification? Would a multiple element lens be able to
do this?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99838367
Adjustable power lenses for $19 ? What's the catch?
More distortion or other optical problem? Are they fragile
or otherwise not very durable? These sound wonderful as
an alternative to bifocals/trifocals/etc. Need to look
at something X distance away? Just adjust your glasses
as needed.
> The classification as "medical devices" by the FDA is what
> attaches the requirement of a prescription.
Why aren't drugstore reading glasses classified as "medical devices"?
If you are slightly far-sighted you can get 3 pairs for $10 and
the quality is surprising decent. If you are near-sighted you
have to spend hundreds of dollars.
The eyephone app thingy sounds useful, (was planning on actually
reading TFA ( *gasp* ), but it crashed my browser) but will it
check your eyes for health problems? Of course none of my eye
doctors ever warned me that I was at high risk for retinal
detachment, so maybe the eyephone app would have been just as good?
GRUMBLE
But in the US, eye tests aren't expensive. Health insurance does not cover corrective optics normally. Yo either have to get separate insurance, or pay yourself. The cost of the separate insurance generally works out to the same cost you'd pay yourself, just spread out. The most expensive you usually see is around $100 and that's at a private optician's office and is usually quite a comprehensive test. $50 is not that hard to find at chain locations.
The expensive part of corrective optics is not the test, it is the optics themselves. If you want light, thin, glasses with high end anti-glare and so on and so forth you can spend $500 no sweat.
I'm not disagreeing about health care costs, but vision isn't one of the expensive ones, at least not an annual eye check (and let's face it, most of us are lazy enough to not do one unless we see the need).
I stumbled across that dude on Lifehacker. Wanted arms length glasses for computing, I was looking through the bottom of my geezer glasses with my head tilted back. Shopko wanted $350 for single vision. I figured out how to read my prescription, guessed at the order, and got a perfect fit for $20.
And they're made by the same Chinese 10 year old slave labor as Shopko.
Bars? On an iPhone? I thought we already gave up on that.