Q&A: Meeting the need for low vision services with wearable tech

(Image credit: AdobeStock/suriya)

For patients who are affected by central vision loss due retinal conditions like geographic atrophy, diabetic retinopathy, and Stargardt disease, treatments that preserve their remaining vision are only one part of the picture. Often, these patients are referred to low vision centers or low vision specialists to learn how to implement the tools available to adjust for their reduced visual field. Among these tools are assistive devices that allow patients to regain the use if their vision.

Following the 2025 ARVO meeting, our team spoke with Roland Mattern, from eSight Eyewear to discuss how devices like those created by eSight can provide options of patients with retina conditions. In this discussion, Mattern touches on the value patients gain from being able to resume daily activities, the reduction in patient volume on the low vision centers and supporting ophthalmologists as the work to best serve their patients.

Note: The following discussion has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ophthalmology Times: The eSight team was on site at the 2025 ARVO meeting. Can you tell me a little bit about kind of what this experience ARVO was like, and what kind of conversations you were able to have at that meeting?

Roland Mattern: ARVO is a great meeting. It's certainly cutting edge as far as the information that's presented, and we're there, of course, to present our product to the clinical audience. We do partner with ophthalmology and optometry offices that deal with AMD and other retinal diseases that rob patients of their central vision. And then, of course, that's where our assistive wearable technology comes in, because we give you your central perception back, in many cases. Our role there is just to create awareness that we exist. We're still a relatively young and unknown entity. So, these conferences certainly are a great vehicle to reach a lot of people, to increase awareness of the product, of the brand, the benefits that it can bring patients.

OT: What do you wish ophthalmologists knew more about what assistive devices can do for their patients?

Mattern: What we'd like eye care providers to know and understand is a couple of things. The first thing is, when people have central vision loss due to retinal disease, and they're at in treatment for those diseases, be it GA or wet AMD, a lot of these medications give them a few letters of vision back in the real world, maybe less so than in clinical trials, but there are options available to their patients beyond medications that can give them a lot of vision back.

So, eSight has been validated in a clinical trial to give 7 lines of vision back for distance, 6 lines of vision back for near and 12 letters of contrast, which, which is a phenomenal result. We have many of our users. They go from, you know, legal blindness to reading 20/20, on the Snellen chart and going back to their activities of daily living, because they have central perception back. They certainly have options. First of all, that's message number one.

The second message would be, is that even though many ophthalmology practices aren't really set up to deal with patients beyond treating the pathology with medication, we do have a telehealth service that can bolt on right onto their practice. If they have patients that they come in, and they identify them as potentially a strong candidate for something like eSight they can refer them their contact information right to us, and we can reach out to them with their permission and do a quick evaluation where the product is maybe suitable for them if they want to try it.

Then, if that is all positive, we will enroll them in our telehealth program, where we will ship them a device. We will set them up with one of our coaches, who's also a user of the device, and we'll do a kind of a virtual training program to teach them how to use the device, talk about what they want to achieve with their with their vision, what are their goals, and then give them some activities to do to try to achieve those goals. And then we let them use it for a few days in the real world, in their home, to make sure it works for them. And then we, of course, follow up and see how they're doing if they're interested in purchasing, and if they want to purchase, that's wonderful. We'll send them a brand-new device, and they return the demo unit, and if the decide is not for them, they just return the device without any risk to them. So those programs exist free of charge to clinics that deal with AMD patients. And so that would be the second thing that I want to know is low vision doesn't have to be a referral to a low vision center necessarily, because in a lot of geographies, there's very few low vision specialists, and they may not have many options. Here's a way to directly give that option to their patient as another tool in their tool set for their AMD and central vision loss patients.

OT: From a patient standpoint, is this product covered by Medicaid or Medicare, or is there anythings people should know about discussing an assistive vision device with their insurance providers?

Mattern: Unfortunately, we don't have coverage through Medicare orMedicaid yet. We are, of course, working towards that. Veteran Affairs, however, does cover it 100%, so if any of their patients are veterans, they can access the device through their local veteran affairs department. There are a number of state agencies that, if you have a patient that's still working years, perhaps a patient with Stargardt disease or diabetic retinopathy, as they are often still working age, if the individual goes back to work or continues to go back to school with their device, in many cases, the state agencies will cover the device as well, either in part or in full. So that's also another option to keep in mind, although it is not consistent from state to state.

OT: We’ve discussed care within the US. Is this device available outside of the US?

Mattern: It's available in US and Canada currently. We are working towards expanding into UK and Europe, as well as Mexico. Those will be the next expansion countries that we're working on.

OT: As far as incorporating within low vision centers or low vision clinics, how does technology like this address an unmet need, or how can this help take the burden off of those centers who have high volume of patients?

Mattern: Every practice has so many patients with GA, wet AMD, diabetic retinopathy, where they are there for injections or for surgical treatment, in some cases, depending on what the pathology is. There's no shortage of patients. Unfortunately, the shortage is really in individuals that do low vision services. Many are doing it part time as part of the practice. There's very few that do it full time in low vision. Therefore, if you have the ability to refer to somebody in the local area, oftentimes there's waiting lists, and in many cases, there is really no one to refer or the access is limited.

From a patient's perspective, you may be getting a great patient experience from your primary ophthalmologist or retina specialist, but then when you get referred out for low vision, the patient burden for those clinics is so high that they struggle to get to new patients quickly. So that is, again, another avenue where we can help supplement those services locally.

OT: What kind of user feedback are you getting from the patients that are using the device?

Mattern: There's so many stories of our users, of how they've used the device. It really depends on what their goals are. Many of our patients, their original goal is, “I'd like to be able to read again, see faces again, and watch TV again.” Those are the most common ones. When they start being able to do those things, they start going, “maybe, if I can do this, maybe I can do that too.” Their use of the device starts to expand.

We have users that are using it for just about everything that comes to mind, except for driving. So, whether you know, gardening brings you pleasure, now you can garden again and have that central perception back to make it easier. Broadway shows, movies, live sporting events, concerts: It really depends on what people's goals are with what they want to do with their enhanced vision, and that point is really just as the sky's the limit.

So that's most commonly the feedback we get. We also hear people say, “I'm using it for so much more than I thought.” The other thing we also hear often from users is feedback from those around the individual who's wearing the device because we don't impact mobility negatively. You can be mobile with a device, and so that gives you a certain degree of independence back as well. So now you're going to the store and shopping by yourself. You are traveling by yourself. You are able to take an Uber, see the license plate, jump in the car or a bus, or whatever you want to do without assistance. So not only does it benefit the individual to pursue the things that they want to pursue, but it also frees up their spouse or family members who may have been engaged in being the caretaker, gives them independence back as well. So everyone has a benefit from that perspective, and although there's really no data to demonstrate it yet, the mental health impact of both vision loss and hearing loss is tremendous, and perhaps tools like this that give you back your independence and your ability to rely on your own visual perceptions could lighten that burden on the mental health toll, which also impacts not only the individual but also those around them.