iPad App for Detecting Retinal Disease Receives Second FDA Approval

myVisionTrack®, an iPhone and iPad application developed by researchers at the Retina Foundation of the Southwest to monitor vision for individuals with retinal disease, such as macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, has received its second FDA clearance for its new service, the Physician Portal.

The app was FDA approved in 2013, but with the new service for physicians, myVisionTrack® can now be used by doctors to remotely monitor their patient’s visual function and track their progress through the Physician Portal.  This additional service allows doctors to detect early vision changes to begin or change treatment to best fit the needs of the patient.

“myVisionTrack® has the potential to be an effective remote monitoring tool to track the effects of treatment and to detect changes in the patient’s condition,” said Dr. Yi-Zhong Wang, Director of the Retina Foundation Macular Function Laboratory who has helped to develop the myVisionTrack® application.

This new feature of myVisionTrack®, used to alert physicians, helps the physician determine if the patient is experiencing a decline in their visual function before significant vision loss occurs and helps the physician track the effectiveness of treatment.

Additionally, there has been an important new finding in the clinical study of myVisionTrack®. There are patients who are showing signs of improvement in their ability to detect finer distortions of shapes using the app after anti-VEGF treatment, a standard therapy for retinal diseases such as macular degeneration.

The app uses a vision test developed by Dr. Wang at the Retina Foundation that presents the patient with four circles. Only one of the circles is distorted. The patient performs the test by tapping the circle that is distorted. However, the distortion becomes harder to detect as the test goes along.

For a patient who has a macular disease, all four circles may appear to be distorted at the same time even though there is only one distorted circle. The interim results of a 12-month clinical study conducted by the Retina Foundation showed that patients with diabetic macular edema under active anti-VEGF treatment had improvements in their ability to detect the distorted circle in three- and six-month follow-up tests through an increase in their shape discrimination sensitivity.

“This study will continue and is expected to complete at the end of this year.  We hope to see if there is continued improvement, or even stabilization, in patients’ visual function,” said Dr. Wang

This study helps to advance the mission of the Retina Foundation of the Southwest, which is to prevent and restore vision loss through innovative research and treatment. Click here to made a secure donation to this important mission and to our work that is leading research and saving sight.