Information for patients

Presbyopia is the word you start hearing when you get to your forties.

Presbyopia is defined by experts as a visual condition that starts to affect people in early to mid-40s and consists of a gradual loss of the accommodative response of the crystalline lens caused by a hardening of the lens of the eye (see below for more details). This condition results in gradual loss of eyes´ ability to focus on nearby objects, and forms a natural part of the aging process. In fact, the term “presbyopia” comes from a Greek word which means “old eye.”

As time passes by, your body changes, and so do your eyes. We all have a zooming mechanism in our eyes, which is called accommodation, and it allows us to see from far distances to close ones. However, this mechanism slowly stops working at some point in our lives. This is presbyopia, and it happens to almost all of us, no matter where you are from, how healthy your routines are, or the work you perform.

There is no way to stop or reverse the natural aging process, nevertheless, research is performed all over the world with the aim of correcting presbyopia and the way it affects each individual with a common objective of improving the quality of life of the effected population.

EYE project is designed to tackle two main goals:

To achieve the objectives our project selected 5 outstanding PhD students and their work is focusing on:

Study and development of new contact lens designs.
Study and development of new materials for contact lenses with comfort improvement for the patient.
Development of a Patient-Reported Outcome instrument, a tool to monitor the patients’ experience through the answer to different questions in an online platform, helping to find the solution that better satisfies them.
Development of a software platform that predicts the best contact lenses for each patient.
Development of tools (mobile application) capable of collecting and monitoring clinical parameters, patient-reported outcomes, and environmental conditions constantly throughout the patient’s different circumstances while they wear contact lenses.

The students develop their projects using infrastructure and under professional supervision of three institutions: University Complutense of Madrid, contact lens manufacturer Mark’ennovy based in UK and a Portugal based branch of Alain Afflelou, optical centre network with more than 1.400 optical centres around the world.

The research team comprises more than 20 professionals from academic and private sector collaborating together to achieve a better quality of life for presbyopic patients.

Want to know more?

What is a Patient-Reported Outcome instrument?

After multiple interviews with patients and experts, a set of questions was created.

This set of questions will assess all aspects surrounding the quality of life of a presbyopic contact lens wearer, from symptoms to the possible effects that this condition may have on patients’ self-esteem.

All the questions will be implemented in an online platform that will use artificial intelligence to select, from the set of questions, the right ones to define each user’s experience and help to evaluate their expectations, sensations, and feelings. In this way, the optometrist can better select the right contact lens for each patient’s lifestyle.

What is the
Mobile Application for?

The application is designed to allow patients to record videos of their eyes wearing contact lenses anytime and anywhere.

It also collects information about the environment as shown in Figure 1 when the video is taken. Furthermore, the app analyses the videos and extracts essential information such as how often the patient blinks and their pupil sizes.

By implementing the patient-reported outcomes instrument in the app and through the analysis of the videos, the optometrist will have a tool that will help them evaluate any problem that the patient might have before, during, or after wearing the multifocal contact lens. All this information is stored in a database, which is used to find the best contact lenses for each patient.

Environment

Blink characteristics

What Causes Presbyopia?

After multiple interviews with patients and experts, a set of questions was created.

Your clear lens sits inside the eye behind your colored iris. It changes shape to focus light onto the retina so you can see. When you are young, the lens is soft and flexible, easily changing shape. This lets you focus on objects both close-up and far away. After age 40, the lens becomes more rigid. It cannot change shape as easily. This makes it harder to read, thread a needle, or do other close-up tasks.

See video about presbyopia here

source: https://www.aao.org/eye-health/diseases/what-is-presbyopia

Objetives