Paediatric Sight Aid - design requirements
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Design of the first wearable low vision aid for children and young people to improve the ability to see
IRAS ID
255003
Contact name
Annegret Dahlmann-Noor
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Vision Technologies Ltd
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
n/a, n/a
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Around 19 million children live with sight loss worldwide. Sight loss is often caused by rare conditions that damage the eye, where spectacles cannot help. However, most of these children still see to a certain degree, the image is just very blurry. For them, magnification or other image enhancements can facilitate reading and being able to see facial expressions. While simple sight aids such as magnifiers have a long tradition, they are confined to a single purpose. Instead, children need to look at many different things close-up and in the distance: when playing, orienting outside or being in the classroom. To date, no dedicated low vision aid has been developed to address these needs of children and fit them well. Efforts are instead focused on the larger adult low vision market.
Funded by the Wellcome Trust, this project sets out to develop the world's first wearable sight enhancement device specifically for children. In this part of the project (part 1), we will explore the requirements of different age groups in order to design a solution that closely maps onto patients' needs.
For further details on study background and rationale, please refer to the protocol.
REC name
North East - Tyne & Wear South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/NE/0112
Date of REC Opinion
9 Apr 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion