Speed and accuracy of ophthalmic equipment are improving as days pass. The development and enhancement of autorefractors is going through an equally good phase. In fact, a trend seems to have started in which new manufacturers are entering the domain and new simple, portable and affordable instruments are being released in the market.
Optometrists agree that lone autorefractors as well as combination of autorefractor and keratometer have become much faster, more accurate and easier to operate.
According to Cliff Wright, auto-alignment, high-speed printing capability and the accuracy in results are some of the features of modern autorefractors that drew his attention. Cliff Wright is a private practitioner in Berkley, California. He emphasised the simplicity of these modern ophthalmic instruments by saying that it takes only minutes to train an assistant to operate these equipment.
Jeffrey Zwerling is another private consultant who is proud of his ownership of a lone autorefractor and an autorefractor-keratometer integrated set. Today, he is able to follow his patients post their surgeries much conveniently. He appreciates the accuracy and user-friendliness of the devices, which have excellent fogging capability. The autorefractor has almost become a mainstay device at his clinic and he expresses only wonder on how frequently it used by him nowadays.
Miniaturisation Trend
The pace at which technology improves at present makes people believe that autorefractors can soon become smaller and lighter as well as affordable. The possibility is always there for a more portable device to be released. Almost every manufacturer has entered the race for miniaturisation of autorefractors and where there are numbers there is competition. The ultimate gain is of the domain and the consumers as manufacturers compete to produce better and smaller devices.
Manufacturers are under a tremendous challenge of scaling down the price of the ophthalmic equipment to sub-$5000 category. It would be a boon for ophthalmologist, if the developers succeed to achieve the feat, according to Dr. Wright, who expressed optimism regarding the same citing rapid development of technology.
Form and function top the list of Clare Mann, who is also a practitioner. She recently got an autorefractor and after using it, she concluded that the emphasis seems too much inclined towards technology to consider patients’ convenience. She was critical about the armrest, size of the equipment, height of its chair. She also suggested incorporation of some kind of power back-up for places with frequent power-cuts.
Author Bio: Tony Rollan is working with VSI company (http://www.patternless.com/) and he is an author of many articles on all types of optical and ophthalmic equipment. Author talks about medicine, health, alternative healing, well being, sport the ophthalmic equipment.