EyeQue’s new Vision Monitoring Kit is the Newark, California-based company’s latest at-home vision testing solution. We wrote about EyeQue’s low-cost optical scope called VisionCheck that attaches to a smartphone display for users to self-administer refractive measurement tests in January 2017. Later the same year we covered EyeQue’s Insight visual acuity screener when it was launched via a successful Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign. EyeQue also developed a smartphone app, PDCheck, that measures the user’s pupillary distance with a selfie to order the best-fitting glasses.
Now EyeQue is running another crowd-funding campaign — this time on Indiegogo — for its comprehensive Vision Monitoring Kit. The Vision Monitoring Kit includes tests for kids and adults using EyeQue VisionCheck, PDCheck, and a new version of its acuity test device: EyeQue Insight Plus. The EyeQue components and accessories for Insight Plus fit in a soft-shelled storage and carrying case.
EyeQue, which defines itself as the leader of at-home vision testing, does not issue prescriptions or represent itself as a licensed optometrist. While the Vision Monitoring Kit components measure for refractive error to detect changes in users’s vision, EyeQue is careful to disclaim any medical authority or standing and states that the tests do not take the place of comprehensive eye exams that evaluate overall ocular health and binocularity.
EyeQue’s products raise important underlying questions concerning at-home health testing: How accurate are the tests, can they be administered and interpreted correctly by users with no clinical training, and is it even safe to use them without seeing a medical professional? The same questions in play with AI-calibrated hearables lead to a new over-the-counter (OTC) law that allows people with minimal hearing loss to self-administer hearing tests and purchase hearing aids without a prescription from an audiologist.
