We’ve written about eyeglasses as wearable Health Tech several times in the past few years. For example, prescription glasses from VSP have integrated biometric sensors to track activity, movement, drowsiness, and other indicators. We wrote about Orcam’s glasses that combine an attached camera, a text to speech processing unit, and an earpiece to “read” content such as menus, street signs, and price labels. EnChroma sells glasses that correct for red-green color blindness by separating the color frequencies.
Toronto-based eSight recently introduced the eSight 3, the latest electronic glasses iteration that helps legally blind people see. According to eSight, eSight3 is registered with the FDA and EUDAMED and has been inspected by Health Canada. eSight three consists of a high-speed, high-resolution camera mounted in the middle of the electronic glasses. You won’t be mistaken if at first glance you assume eSight 3 is a virtual reality headset. A computing module built into the glasses processes the video and displays the image with algorithm-controlled enhancement on two OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screens directly in front of the wearer’s eyes. The user controls color, contrast, focus, brightness, and magnification with a handheld controller.
ESight 3 cannot help totally or profoundly blind people, but the company claims it can help the 240+ million people in the world who are legally blind or have low vision. Improvements in the new model over previous versions include a lighter and smaller form factor, faster performance, 24X zoom, wider field-of-view, and new Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and HDMI capabilities to aid content streaming. The device costs $9,995, which is a hefty sum for many people. ESight Corp.’s Vision Advocates help users find funding from a variety of public and private sources. The company also expects the results of a clinical study of eSight will be published later in 2017. Six major U.S. and Canadian university medical centers and institutes participated in the study.
