Eyeworld

March 2016 • Ophthalmology Business 25 by Liz Hillman, Staff Writer An autorefractor in the palm of your hand phone. "Our goal is to build the best refraction technology on the market." don't we provide a dedicated phone for this device?" Dr. Zhou said, explaining why they didn't design it to work as an attachment with a person's existing Company creates smartphone-based autorefractor, and seeks to revolutionize how refractive error is measured W hen the autorefractor at one of the Northern New Jersey Eye Institute's 4 offices went down, the technicians and physicians didn't need to wait days or weeks to have it repaired or spend thousands of dollars to have a new one shipped in. The problem was fixed in a matter of minutes with SVOne, a handheld, smartphone-based autorefractor by Smart Vision Labs (New York). "It was convenient, easy for some- one to drive it up there, and we had an autorefractor working in 5 minutes as opposed to having to ship it out for repair for who knows how long," said Bernie Spier, MD, South Orange, New Jersey. The SVOne, a Class 1 device regis- tered with the U.S. Food and Drug Ad- ministration, uses the computer of an iPhone and wavefront abberometry to measure refractive error. Smart Vision Labs co-founder Yaopeng Zhou, PhD, said the nearly $4,000 device, which comes with the iPhone, is meant to be thought of as a whole system. "The thinking behind this is a lot of people already have a phone, but it's a communication device. If we are launching this product as a serious medical product, we don't want people to have a bad experience … taking a call or a scratched lens or different things; so we made a decision: Why continued on page 26 SVOne is a smartphone-based wavefront aberrometer used to measure refractive error. The device weighs less than a pound and costs nearly $4,000, making it far less bulky and expensive when compared to a traditional autorefractor. A recent study published in a peer- reviewed optometric journal found that SVOne obtained refractive measurements as well as traditional methods. Source: Smart Vision Labs

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