Parental Perspective: Combating Myopia

Their parent conversation tool, mEYE™ Guide, strikes the perfect balance between clinical information and parent-friendly presentation, empowering ECPs to make evidence-based decisions on patient treatment using its risk calculation indices, while simultaneously acting as a visual representation to help parents enhance their own understanding of myopia risks and management strategies. The centile analysis shows parents how their child compares with other myopic children and provides predicted adult myopia levels both without treatment and with successful treatment, calculated from an extensive dataset. This ability to accurately articulate a child’s myopia level and describe a future with and without intervention is a powerful one.

mEYE™ Guide also features an interactive vision simulator, which allows parents to experience their child’s myopic perspective with their own eyes. This emotive feature certainly helps ECPs to explain the realities of myopia, but really comes into its own with non-myopic parents, encouraging them to play a more active role in their child’s eye care. And by providing a comprehensive, personalised list of available treatment options, mEYE™ Guide eliminates the need for any additional leaflets or external signposting, further streamlining the parent’s decision-making experience. Finally, the instantly shareable QR code allows parents to effortlessly access their child’s personalised myopia management report, further simplifying communication and engagement with the ECP.

Axial length assessment is incorporated into both Ocumetra’s mEYE™ Guide and mEYE™ Gauge tools. mEYE™ Gauge is a flexible axial length analysis tool allowing ECPs to estimate a child’s axial length using information which is captured more routinely in practice. Building upon the ECP’s clinical knowledge and understanding of axial length, it provides information on how this compares to a normal axial length, and provides a predicted adult axial length and associated vision impairment risk with and without treatment. mEYE™ Gauge, therefore, provides clinical context and meaningful analysis that allows ECPs to identify high risk children in need of treatment. For ECPs who measure axial length in practice, mEYE™ Guide provides similar context and risk assessment for children based on their measured axial length. These two web-based tools are available in a growing number of different languages, with Ocumetra planning to ensure the tools are globally accessible, with additional language options to be made available in the near future. 

A top priority for Ocumetra is user experience – evident in simple, intuitive interfaces that ensure both ECPs and parents can easily navigate the tools without any technical difficulties. By keeping the user experience simple and seamless, chair time is optimised, allowing ECPs to allocate more time to meaningful interactions with patients, and ensuring that children receive the best possible care, protecting their vision and quality of life for today and across their lifetime.

The extensive features of both mEYE™ Guide and mEYE™ Gauge prove that innovation is at the core of Ocumetra’s ethos. But with two experienced eye care professionals at the helm, it’s also clear that Ocumetra is passionate about putting the best tools into the hands of both parents and the ECPs responsible for their children’s eyesight.