Development of a Patient Decision Aid for Refractive Eye Surgery.

Area of Science:

• Ophthalmology
• Medical Informatics
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Patient decision aids are crucial for refractive eye surgery.
• Existing tools often lack customization and specific population targeting.
• College students require tailored educational resources for surgical choices.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate EyeChoose, a web-based decision aid for refractive eye surgery.
• To provide patient education, surgical modality selection, and surgeon recommendations.
• To target the college student population with a needs-based tool.

Main Methods:

• Focus group interviews for needs assessment.
• Development of a scoring algorithm for personalized surgical modality recommendations.
• Prototype implementation and validation study of the EyeChoose tool.

Main Results:

• The EyeChoose tool was developed as a web-based prototype.
• A validation study demonstrated 99.18% accuracy in surgical recommendation.
• Ongoing studies are evaluating the tool's usefulness and usability.

Conclusions:

• EyeChoose effectively provides customized recommendations for refractive eye surgery.
• The tool shows high accuracy and potential for improving patient decision-making.
• Further research is needed for real-world implementation and broader population generalizability.