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Of course, it is not always pleasant or possible for patients to have a comprehensive examination every year. If your prescription has expired but you only want new frames, waiting for the proper examination can be painful.
“Convenience is really important,” said Jorge Cuadros, a clinical telemedicine researcher in the School of Optometry at the University of California, Berkeley. “Now you have to call, make an appointment, get off work, ask for leave, and then have an eye exam. Then you waste a lot of time, and you can do an online test to update your prescription.”
Warby is keenly aware of the limitations of this service. The app cannot detect serious eye problems, such as macular degeneration or cancer. Gilboa, the company’s co-CEO, said that he believes the virtual vision test is a supplement to traditional eye exams, not a substitute. The goal is not to incorporate all the nuances of a comprehensive inspection into the application.
“We didn’t copy all the parts,” he said. “We really split the comprehensive health check to some extent, focusing only on the parts related to your vision and the vision of glasses and contact lenses.”
During the Covid-19 pandemic, this spin-off of telemedicine services has expanded, making it easier for many people to perform many health checks. But one side effect of this trend is that patients’ perceptions of comprehensive healthcare have become fragmented.
“It’s not just in optometry,” Richdale said. “We saw that you can get contraceptive prescriptions or testosterone or other things online. And these companies are in a profitable business. So they come up with works they think they can do because they are relatively mild and sell directly to consumers. You Think:’These are glasses. What harm does it cause?'”
Companies like Warby Parker can provide a large number of disclaimers, but this does not mean that users will pay attention to them. The easier it is to bypass traditional care, the easier it is for people to ignore seemingly minor health problems until it is too late.
“The general idea in the United States seems to be moving away from preventive care and health checks, and more toward emergency care,” Richdale said. “You kind of kick canned food on the road, until one day it’s your problem.”
Experts say that the problem is not in telemedicine itself, but in how it is implemented. Cuadros describes the best approach as an approach that extends but does not replace the existing care provided by doctors. Local doctors can make the best use of this. A virtual vision test can be very useful, especially when it is handled by a doctor who is familiar with your needs as a patient.
“Maybe the person behind the scenes shouldn’t be just an anonymous ophthalmologist somewhere in any company group,” Cuadros said. “But it should be your local ophthalmologist, the person you will see anyway. Get the local eye care provider involved.”
It remains to be seen whether Warby Parker can build enough trust to get people to leave their local optometrists and adopt a hybrid approach to vision care—half online and half in Warby Parker stores. But as it expands its presence and capabilities online and offline, the convenience of its online services will become a powerful selling point.
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