The people at MIT are never resting, and that we already knew, but the latest thing that I have come across is the fact that their Media Lab has developed a versatile, affordable and fast alternative solution for eye testing.

What you see to the left is indeed a mobile phone, but one that's used as a portable eye testing gizmo. I for one have never had my eyes checked by an optometrist, but I do know that the complete equipment needed for such tests is definitely not something that can be carried into remote locations or developing countries.

Nevertheless, the team from the Media Lab of MIT played McGyver again and came up with this low-cost solution for testing vision, which would perfectly suit the aforementioned environments, where untreated vision problems lead to blindness. The better news is that the product is only the small 'viewfinder' as to call it something, which can be attached to any mobile phone capable of handling the processing and software needed.

The patient has to look into a small lens of the ocular, and use the phone's buttons to adjust position of sets of parallel green and red lines making them overlap. The process needs eight rounds for each eye, varying the angle of the lines. After all is done, the phone application makes an analysis of the results and offers a prescription. Like that's not good enough, the costs for producing the eyepiece is a mere $1-2 for production in small quantities, while being able to take down the costs to a few cents on a large scale.


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