At CES, the Eyes Have It

LAS VEGAS—Exciting, energizing and exhausting. Those three words characterize my experience at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show held Jan. 7 to 10, 2019 in Las Vegas. If you’ve never been to CES, just imagine a trade show and conference with more than 4,500 exhibitors from over 155 different countries occupying more than 2.9 million net square feet of exhibit space. Add in 188,000 attendees and 6,500 media to the mix and you get the idea. In the eight years I’ve been going to CES, I am always struck by the growing number of new products that incorporate vision technology.

Smart glasses, video glasses, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, eye tracking systems and assistive and eye health devices all rely upon one killer app to make them work: the human visual system made up of our eyes and visual cortex.

Although most of these products involve eyewear, many fall outside of the vision care channel. That doesn’t mean eyecare professionals shouldn’t know about them. On the contrary, it’s important for ECPs to understand how their patients are using these products, some of which may cause digital eye strain, so they can advise patients how to use them safely.

However, some products on display at CES do have eyecare applications. To learn more, watch my CES slideshow as well as my videos of EyeQue, RightEye, Senaptec and Zeiss.