Preventing avoidable blindness through smart home-monitoring of vision

青光眼是导致不可逆失明的第二大原因。在40岁以上的人群中，每50人中就有1人患有此病，目前所有人每年都必须去医院进行一到两次视力检查。NHS每年进行超过100万次这样的“监测”评估。这些医院访问不仅不方便，而且是不可持续的。甚至在新冠肺炎之前，NHS的积压意味着每月有20名患者因延迟青光眼预约而失明，预计到2030年患者人数将翻一番。对于每23名最具侵袭性青光眼患者中就有1人，仅靠医院监测也是不够的。这些人很容易在两次医院预约之间突然出现不可逆转的视力丧失。解决方案是家庭监控。如果人们可以在家里检查自己的视力，那么就可以更快、更方便、更便宜地发现视力下降。人们可以选择更频繁地测试他们的视力，或者当他们开始注意到变化时，这样可以更快地发现和治疗视力下降。风险较低的患者可以减少医院预约：减少不必要的旅行，并腾出资源，专注于最需要帮助的人。通过在家测试视力，患者可以花更多的时间在诊所与医生面对面交谈。这就是为什么在过去的八年里，我们开发了Eyecatcher：世界上第一个经过验证的青光眼家庭监测视力测试。现在的挑战是扩大Eyecatcher的规模，并以可持续的、具有成本效益的方式将其送到患者手中。

Glaucoma is the second leading cause of irreversible blindness. It affects 1 in 50 people over 40 years old, all of whom must currently travel to hospital once or twice a year for vision checks. Over 1M such "monitoring" assessments are carried out by the NHS every year.These hospital visits are not only inconvenient: they are unsustainable. Even before COVID, NHS backlogs meant that twenty patients a month were going blind due to delayed glaucoma appointments, and patient numbers are expected to double by 2030. Hospital-only monitoring is also insufficient for the 1 in 23 people with the most aggressive form of glaucoma. Such individuals are liable to experience sudden, irreversible sight loss between hospital appointments.The solution is home-monitoring. If people could check their own vision at home, then sight loss could be detected more quickly, conveniently, and cheaply. People could choose to test their vision more frequently, or when they started to notice a change: allowing sight loss to be flagged and treated sooner. Lower risk patients could attend fewer hospital appointments: reducing unnecessary travel, and freeing up resources to focus on those most in need. And by testing vision at home, more time in the clinic could be spent talking to the doctor face-to-face.That is why over the last eight years we have developed Eyecatcher: the world's first validated vision test for glaucoma home-monitoring. The challenge now is to scale up Eyecatcher, and get it into the hands of patients, in a sustainable, cost-effective way.