Charenton-le-Pont, France (02 September, 2022) – An independent clinical study has confirmed that EssilorLuxottica’s ClickCheck – an award-winning portable, low-cost and easy-to-use refractive device – enhances the efficiency of primary vision screening services, especially in low- and middle-income countries where populations do not have easy access to traditional eye care professionals.

Studying 1,100 patients over the course of 6 months in 2020, the study found that the vision screening tool designed for use in base-of the-pyramid (BoP) communities demonstrates high reliability and accuracy in detecting spherical power. This results in the ability to deliver accurate prescriptions on the spot, providing an excellent starting point for subjective refraction.

Key findings from the study:

The ClickCheck is highly accurate in measuring spherical power and is very similar to the spherical power measurement by subjective refraction and the autorefractor

Across all age groups, the ClickCheck offers a highly accurate measurement of spherical power as well as the visual acuity output that is similar to that from subjective refraction

The ClickCheck estimates astigmatism with moderate accuracy when compared to subjective refraction and the autorefractor

The visual acuity using the corrections from the ClickCheck had a moderate level of agreement with that from subjective refraction.

The results of the clinical study further endorse the ClickCheck as an integral part of providing good vision to underserved communities in low-resource settings, ultimately contributing to EssilorLuxottica’s ambition to help eliminate uncorrected poor vision in a generation.

The clinical study is published in PLOS ONE, a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal published by the Public Library of Science since 2006, and can be found here.

“Major strides have been made in creating programs to address uncorrected refractive errors in the world, and especially in developing countries where poor vision is still preventing people from learning, driving and in general, living productively and safely,” shares Professor Kovin Naidoo, well-known eye health advocate and the global head for advocacy and partnerships from the OneSight EssilorLuxottica Foundation. “However, achieving scale and addressing the demand are still elusive due to the lack of human resources. In underserved environments where an autorefractor is unavailable or unaffordable, the ClickCheck allows the limited number of clinicians to serve more patients by providing an affordable, reliable starting point for the refraction process and reducing overall examination time per patient. We are proud that PLOS ONE is giving visibility to the clinical study attesting to the efficacy of the tool.”

“This study demonstrates the feasibility of using the ClickCheck as an alternative method for diagnosis of refractive errors. We believe that this device can play an important role in providing a first level assessment of refractive errors, prior to performing subjective refraction by trained personnel,” shares Sanil Joseph, lead researcher of the study as well as senior faculty & hospital management consultant with Lions Aravind Institute of Community Ophthalmology (LAICO), a wing of Aravind Eye Care System.

“The advantages of the ClickCheck over conventional autorefractors are its very low cost, portability, and ease of use with very minimal training,” adds Dr. Boateng Wiafe, Technical Advisor, Operation Eyesight Universal, an international development organization working to eliminate avoidable blindness and restore eyesight in developing countries. “It has really improved our vision screening processes, especially in rural communities.”

Driving innovation to help eliminate uncorrected poor vision in a generation

Per EssilorLuxottica’s Eliminating Poor Vision in a Generation roadmap developed in 2019 with the help of healthcare experts, delivering access to vision care for those in BoP communities by 2050 requires actions and investment across four areas – innovating for affordable solutions, creating sustainable access points, driving advocacy & awareness and funding free and subsidized services.

In particular, a total investment of US$700 million has to be front-loaded in the next 10 – 15 years by the entire vision ecosystem to realize innovations in product, technology and service delivery models so that everyone can make use of these innovations to create access to vision care for the underserved.

This underpins the driving force behind the development of the ClickCheck and other EssilorLuxottica innovations aimed at the BoP communities.

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