Iltifat Husain MD contributed to this piece
Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine have developed two low cost adaptors that allow smartphones to capture high-resolution images of the front and back of an eye.
The technology will make it easy for patients to take pictures of their eyes and share it with their physician.
The researchers recently published their work on the smartphone attachment in the Journal of Mobile Technology in Medicine.
They hope for the technology to increase eye-care services and improve the ability to advise patients on their own care remotely.
“Adapting smartphones for the eye has the potential to revolutionize the delivery of eye care — in particular, to provide it in places where it’s less accessible. Whether it’s in the emergency department, where patients often have to wait a long time for a specialist, or during a primary-care physician visit, this new workflow will improve the quality of care for our patients, especially in the developing world where ophthalmologists are few and far between” said David Myung, MD, PhD, and lead author of the paper.
Myung uses the example of a victim of a car accident arriving at an emergency with an eye injury to illustrate how the technology would be of benefit in a hospital setting.
He explains, “normally the physician would have to describe this finding in her electronic record with words alone. Smartphones today not only have the camera resolution to supplement those words with a high-resolution photo, but also the data-transfer capability to upload that photo securely to the medical record in a matter of seconds.”
Currently several EMRs, such as EPIC, enable providers to upload images directly into a patient’s EMR from their smartphone.
The current device is only available for purchase for research purposes while its creators seek guidance from the FDA. Its current production costs are under $90, which the creators hope to make even lower in order to maximize accessibility to the device.