Guardion Health Sciences Receives Methods Patents to Standardize Vision Testing
On July 10 and July 17, 2018, Guardion Health Sciences was issued two patents by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, both entitled “Method and Apparatus for Visual Acuity Testing.” The first patent targeted automatic light calibration of the display screens used for vision testing and the second added proprietary protection for methodology to continuously monitor and adjust the screen lighting. The second patent also added methodology to compensate for other testing factors, such as room illumination and when patients view the vision test through a mirror (which is a common practice in eye doctors’ offices worldwide).
This proprietary technology provides an easy way to automatically standardize vision test lighting to a level recommended by the United States National Academy of Sciences and the United States Food and Drug Administration, according to Guardion. A lack of standards causes significant variability in vision testing outcomes and represents a significant deficiency in vision testing standards. The extreme level of variability in everyday vision testing environments was reported in May of this year by Guardion scientists at the Association for Research In Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO).
New technologies for treating ocular disease are progressing rapidly, in many cases creating significant improvements in patients’ everyday visual capability. To ensure that new patient treatments are effectively monitored and evaluated by eye doctors, proper standardization of vision testing is required. Heightened accuracy of the testing results will lead to more efficient health care delivery and is expected to significantly reduce health care costs, as treatments are streamlined to focus on those that specifically benefit visual outcomes.
The standardization technology will also help to spur the rapid adoption into everyday care of new vision testing technologies, such as contrast sensitivity, which will provide an even more accurate measure of treatment outcome, thus lowering costs.
“The data concerning lack of vision testing standardization is eye opening,” David Evans, PhD, inventor of this unique new methodology, said in a company news release. “Our studies show that vision testing results vary dramatically from examination room to examination room and from doctor to doctor. We have developed a standardization technology that allows all clinicians to easily standardize examination rooms, thus allowing more direct and accurate evaluation of treatment outcomes.”
Dr. Evans is the founder of VectorVision, a leader in standardized vision testing, which Guardion acquired in 2017 and it is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company. Dr. Evans is now a Director and the Chief Science Officer of Guardion.
“We believe that the inclusion of this new technology into the next version of Guardion’s proprietary CSV-1000 contrast sensitivity device will result in a market-leading state-of-the-art device for use by all eye care providers worldwide, and will provide a significant addition to our technical and product portfolio. We applaud Dr. Evans for his leadership in this area and his insight into standardizing vision test lighting,” Michael Favish, Guardion’s founder and CEO, said in the news release.