Abstract
Purpose :
Bluetooth low energy beacons are an emerging, novel technology involving tiny sensors that record movement and temperature, which we hypothesize could be used in the future to determine when low vision patients are using hand-held magnifiers at home. This could help to determine when patients have stopped using their magnifier over an extended period, which would prompt a follow-up evaluation to attempt to resolve any issues. As a first step to demonstrate proof of concept for this indication, we evaluated beacon sensors in a low vision clinical setting.
Methods :
We recorded temperature data from Estimote sticker beacons on the top and bottom of the handle of optical magnifiers (Eschenbach Easypocket and Mattingly SMARTmag) held by 13 low vision patients in clinic during evaluation of the magnifier while reading. To capture typical behavior, patients were not told about the beacon sensors before/during magnifier use.
Results :
The majority of patients’ (62%) hand/fingers made direct contact with BLE beacons. Those with direct vs. indirect contact had greater temperature increases on average from baseline after 30 seconds (0.68°C vs. 0.26°C), 60 seconds (1.02°C vs. 0.35°C), 90 seconds (1.39°C vs. 0.54°C), 105-120 seconds (1.54°C vs. 0.62°C), and 135-150 seconds (2.07°C vs. 0.8°C). All temperature increases were greater than room temperature fluctuations without magnifier usage (0.2°C over 120 seconds). After 30-90 seconds, there were no significant temperature differences between magnifiers (p=0.26-0.63), top/bottom locations (p=0.29-0.58), by age (p=0.19-0.54), race (p=0.21-0.67) or gender (p=0.38-0.71), after adjusting for direct contact. No patients commented about the beacon sensors, indicating support for their acceptability and non-intrusiveness.
Conclusions :
Estimote sticker beacons attached to magnifiers can reliably detect temperature increases when held by low vision patients; future studies should determine if this might serve to indicate home-based magnifier usage.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.