app Netra-G shows the refraction of light conditions in the user’s eye to. (EyeNetra)
An accessory for smartphones to replace going to the optician and allow each user to find the right glasses to him yourself.
Victor Pamplona is neither a doctor nor optician. You may be given a prescription for a prescription glasses, we also sell a model. And yet the man has in his head, the global optical market – after all, $ 75 billion hard – shake up: with the help of “Netra-G”, a smartphone supplement. The small device can examine the eyes of the user within one to two minutes, not unlike an ophthalmologist.
Netra G contains a developed version of Pamplona itself a refractometer. Such a device measures the refractive conditions in mind. The professional version costs usually around the $ 5000. Pamplona creates the same with the help of a construction made of plastic lenses, which only costs a fraction. After an investigation, the software provides the diopter values for suitable glasses -. Been what make only eye doctors or opticiansThe advantage of Pamplona device is that anyone can use it. “We change the medicine, by letting the user to measure itself,” says Pamplona, who immigrated from Brazil to the United States several years ago.
The Creative programmers is not the only one on the Nimbus doctor scrapes. A whole range of accessories for smartphones will help people to create their own diagnoses. This could reduce the health care system at the end of the cost. In the U.S. for example, 20 percent of health spending for physician fees apply – three percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. Pamplona wants doctors, however, do not make unnecessary: ”We see it as a kind of supervisor, as a coach.” EyeNetra His company has received over two million dollars of seed capital investor Vinod Khosla. Is not too well known, to speak to the medical profession, threw them in the past year “quackery” before. 80 percent of their diagnostic services could be replaced by machines, Khosla is certain. EyeNetra He not only finances but also other start-ups that have similar goals. Below are AliveCor that sells a heart monitor for smartphones, and Cellscope, the device is designed to help parents to examine their children to a middle ear infection out. developedPamplona Netra-G during his studies at MIT in a laboratory, which specializes in computational photography. This discipline tries the limitations of conventional photographic technique with the aid of computer technology to break some with cameras that can take pictures around the corner or at any distance can focus
Netra-G works as follows:., The user puts the device on the screen of a smartphone and looking through the optics. On the screen, it must then be made to cover red and green lines. The app is calculated from the difference of what the user believes to see, and the actual position of the lines of visual acuity. With the help of the result, the user could then order from an online optician as Warby Parker glasses right – and save between 50 and 150 dollars for the diagnosis by a specialist ophthalmologist or optometrist
In the optician industry sees. you Pamplona device with enthusiasm. Dominick Maino, an optometrist from Chicago, who met at a conference Pamplona, the unit trust to deliver “in most cases good results” to. Pamplona that would give the people more power over their health, is to be “no bad thing”. “You can not remove the doctor from the equation,” Maino points out. “To a great spectacle it requires much more than a measurement of the ratio of refraction in the eye.”
Euan Thomson from Khosla Ventures as expected some resistance from the American medical profession. That works exclusively on a fee basis – with every patient who stays away, also decreases the income. Khosla Ventures advises start-ups in the “Mobile Health” therefore, to market their products directly as a consumer device, but only once directly cooperate with doctors. Also EyeNetra yet avoids a confrontation with the gathered medical profession. Netra G was therefore first tested extensively in India, where tens of millions of people are visually impaired due to lack eye exams and eyeglasses. In addition, the optician business is there not as highly regulated as in the U.S.. In the long term would have to contact companies like EyeNetra AliveCor or directly to the consumer, says Thomson. Which could only benefit from self-generated ECG or eye examinations. “Basically, it’s about information, not devices,” said Thomson. The only question is, who interprets this information. <- AUTHOR MARKER DATA BEGIN -> ( Antonio Regalado ) / <- RSPEAK_STOP - -> (nbo)
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