Enablers and Barriers to Deployment of Smartphone-Based Home Vision Monitoring in Clinical Practice Settings

Telemedicine is accelerating the remote detection and monitoring of medical conditions, such as vision-threatening diseases. Meaningful deployment of smartphone apps for home vision monitoring should consider the barriers to patient uptake and engagement and address issues around digital exclusion in vulnerable patient populations.

To quantify the associations between patient characteristics and clinical measures with vision monitoring app uptake and engagement.

In this cohort and survey study, consecutive adult patients attending Moorfields Eye Hospital receiving intravitreal injections for retinal disease between May 2020 and February 2021 were included.

Patients were offered the Home Vision Monitor (HVM) smartphone app to self-test their vision. A patient survey was conducted to capture their experience. App data, demographic characteristics, survey results, and clinical data from the electronic health record were analyzed via regression and machine learning.

Associations of patient uptake, compliance, and use rate measured in odds ratios (ORs).

Of 417 included patients, 236 (56.6%) were female, and the mean (SD) age was 72.8 (12.8) years. A total of 258 patients (61.9%) were active users. Uptake was negatively associated with age (OR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.97-0.998; P = .02) and positively associated with both visual acuity in the better-seeing eye (OR, 1.02; 95% CI, 1.00-1.03; P = .01) and baseline number of intravitreal injections (OR, 1.01; 95% CI, 1.00-1.02; P = .02). Of 258 active patients, 166 (64.3%) fulfilled the definition of compliance. Compliance was associated with patients diagnosed with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (OR, 1.94; 95% CI, 1.07-3.53; P = .002), White British ethnicity (OR, 1.69; 95% CI, 0.96-3.01; P = .02), and visual acuity in the better-seeing eye at baseline (OR, 1.02; 95% CI, 1.01-1.04; P = .04). Use rate was higher with increasing levels of comfort with use of modern technologies (β = 0.031; 95% CI, 0.007-0.055; P = .02). A total of 119 patients (98.4%) found the app either easy or very easy to use, while 96 (82.1%) experienced increased reassurance from using the app.

This evaluation of home vision monitoring for patients with common vision-threatening disease within a clinical practice setting revealed demographic, clinical, and patient-related factors associated with patient uptake and engagement. These insights inform targeted interventions to address risks of digital exclusion with smartphone-based medical devices.