It says I can go blind from this!” That’s what one cataract patient concluded after reading all of the information made available to them, as recounted by one of the optometrists in this issue’s cover story about technologies that enable ECPs to automate their patients’ education.

Today, we have more information at our fingertips (literally) than in the history of the human race. That’s the good news. The bad news is that, left to their own devices, patients are likely to find all of the information on a given topic, whether they should or not.

That’s just what can happen when patients surf the internet to gather every last bit of information related to cataracts, for example, or whichever conditions and symptoms the average person decides to research on their own. Ultimately, this can lead the previously uneducated consumer to become hyper-educated and come to the wrong conclusion, such as “I can go blind from this!”

“We want our patients to be informed and to know the importance of their eye health and prescribed treatment, but we want to make sure we provide the information they actually need, not all of the information available,” said the optometrist whose patient concluded that they could go blind.

That’s exactly what the “High-Tech Tutors” in this issue’s “Eye Q Factor” accomplish, they enable eye-care practitioners to select exactly what information a specific patient needs based on their symptoms and conditions and send it to them automatically and electronically to read whenever they like, wherever they are most comfortable and on the electronic device of their own choosing.

Using these e-tools, ECPs can now be confident that when leaving their patients to their own devices—whether the device they prefer is a laptop, tablet or smartphone—they will have access to the exact eyecare education they need, no more and no less.

jsailer@jobson.com