Playing VR can improve your eyesight? Digital Therapy

Milabobo

Member
Luminopia, a startup focused on children's health, recently announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved its digital therapy to improve vision disorders in children. This is a VR (virtual reality) based therapy that can be used to improve visual impairments in children, such as amblyopia or lazy eye. Patients are understood to be able to improve their vision by wearing a VR headset to watch a modified TV show or movie.

1635146594836.png


This is the first digital therapy approved by the FDA for children with amblyopia, meaning it is the first digital therapy for neurological visual impairment.

1. Amblyopia Affects 3% of Children Worldwide​


Amblyopia often referred to as lazy eye, is a medical condition characterized by a loss of visual acuity. Amblyopia is usually diagnosed in early childhood and is caused by a neurological defect that inhibits visual input from the weaker eye, resulting in long-term vision deficits.

Amblyopia is the most common cause of vision defects in children, affecting 3% of children worldwide, and occurs when the brain and eyes stop working properly. The brain relies more on one eye, which can lead to vision problems in the other eye. It is the leading cause of vision problems in children.

Luminopia One, developed by Luminopia, is a software-only digital therapy used with software application-compatible Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) to nurture the less sighted eyes and train the eyes to work together by watching TV and movies.
 

Milabobo

Member

2. 105 children participated in clinical trials 1.8 improvements in vision in the treatment group​


Luminopia, which has more than 700 hours of video content in its library, partnered with children's content distributors such as Nelvana and Sesame Workshop to develop the tool.

Playing VR can improve your eyesight? Digital Therapy



Luminopia One was approved based on positive data from multiple clinical trials, including a recent Phase 3 pivotal trial published in the Journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, demonstrating the safety and efficacy of the treatment in amblyopic patients aged 4-7 years. This study is the first successful randomized controlled trial of amblyopia treatment in more than a decade and the first to show the efficacy of the new binocular approach.

In this phase 3 trial, 105 children were randomly assigned to a treatment group wearing Luminopia One glasses and a control group wearing corrective eyewear alone. 4 weeks later, there was a statistically significant difference in visual acuity improvement between the two groups. In the 12-week control, the mean improvement in amblyopic visual acuity was 1.8 in the treatment group and 0.8 in the control group according to the standard logarithmic visual acuity scale (p=0.001), a significant difference between the two groups.
 
Top