Although you can shop for your glasses and frames online in a relatively inexpensive way, getting a prescription for new glasses is still the same hassle. First, you have to book an appointment with your doctor, spend time in the waiting room, and then go through a full-fledged eye test.
Enter SVOne Enterprise, a phone-powered vision test that can be self-administered to replace your eye doctor by sending you a prescription for your glasses. This device is made by Smart Vision Labs that was launched in some selected stores in the New York.
How It Works?
SVOne Enterprise is based on auto-refraction technology. This technology bounces a laser off your retina, and the resulting measurements are taken by the device. This product also involves a telemedicine element: after the vision test is conducted, the results are sent to an eye doctor who checks the prescription before finalizing it. You can download the prescription and get your glasses anytime.
The device resembles an iPhone with a special eye piece on the top that is highly functional. Optical stores can now use this device to provide additional service to customers; both eye test and glasses at the same place. The cost of each test is $40.
Yaopeng Zhou, the founder of SVOne Enterprise, said while talking about his motivation behind the device,
“There are almost 200 million people in America who need glasses, but only 106 million eye exams take place every year… there’s only one eye doctor for every 5,000 people in the US.”
How To Conduct A Vision Test?
First, you read from a standard vision chart on the device’s screen either with or without your glasses. Next, you place your one eye in SVOne Enterprise’s eyepiece as a red laser clicks three photos. You need to do the same with your other eye as well. After about 24 hours, you will receive the link of an official prescription signed by one of the companies commissioned doctors. Now, all you have to do is take the prescription to an optical store.
Smart Vision Labs is not the only company working on phone-powered visual tests. Blink and Peek are also trying to simplify the very same problem of visiting an eye doctor for a prescription. Despite years of work, they have not launched any product yet making SVOne Enterprise the first device to provide an accurate and valid prescription.
The next step would be mass production of the device. Enterprise is currently available in about more than 20 countries.
Get your glasses right at your doorstep after getting an online prescription! Amazing, isn’t it?
