Future Uses Of The Mobile Phone

Future uses of the mobile phone could be a sight for sore eyes when you can get your latest prescription from staring into your smartphone.

This story has nothing to do with green mobile phones, rather it just hi-lites the wonder of the future of these devices. Sending a text is one thing, playing games, sorting out your finances is another? But using a mobile phone whereby aid workers using this application can do eye tests quickly and inexpensively out in remote and developing areas was to good a story not to write about.

Researchers at the MIT University in the US have developed a software application and a plastic device to fit to the phone so to be able to undertake low cost eye exams. As in the photo the plastic piece is clipped onto the phones lens, the patient looks into the lens, and presses the phone’s arrow keys until sets of parallel green and red lines just overlap. This is repeated eight times, with the lines at different angles, for each eye.

The whole process only takes two minutes, at which point the software loaded onto the phone then provides the prescription data.