Home vision monitoring in macular disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Home vision monitoring using OKKO Health app in age-related macular degeneration
IRAS ID
293163
Contact name
Alexander J.E. Foss
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Research Summary
Macular disease, which presents as central visual distortion and impairment in recognition of faces, reading and adaption to dim light, is the leading cause of blindness in developed nations and affects up to 1.5 million people in the UK. Macular disease is most common in older age, with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in early stages (‘dry AMD’) or late stages (‘wet AMD’). Due to advances in injection treatments for wet AMD, patients are now seen more frequently in hospital clinics for monitoring. These clinic visits are to see whether or not a patient needs to receive an injection or if their disease is stable and can skip a treatment.Smartphone apps have the ability to measure visual function and offer the ability to expand on traditional testing with new methods.
Adopting home monitoring of this nature into care pathways has the potential to reduce clinic visits in order to lessen the burden on the patient and make clinical services more sustainable. Eventually, home monitoring will allow remote detection of deterioration of vision and provide timely provision of treatment.
This project will assess the feasibility of the OKKO Health app as a home monitoring solution for patients with AMD. In this project, we aim to clinically validate the app’s metrics against standard clinic measures, assess feasibility of the app for patients monitoring vision at home.
Summary of Results
This was to be a two-stage study. The first stage was to create a symptom questionnaire to assess change in vision in patients with age related macular degeneration. Following interviewing patients, a panel of 18 questions were developed and given to 59 participants.
Analysis of the responses showed that they were all a measure of a single construct (vision) and that the number of questions could be reduced to 8 without losing any significant information.
The plan had been then to progress to a second stage to validate this on a second sample of patients. However, at this point we obtained funding to develop a mobile phone app for patients with macular degeneration. The developed questionnaire has now been incorporated into that app and is part of separate ethics submission and so this study was declared ended.REC name
Wales REC 4
REC reference
21/WA/0142
Date of REC Opinion
19 May 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion