Lehigh Business and Engineering Students Foster Eye Care Breakthrough
A group of students in the Lehigh University Integrated Business and Engineering (IBE) program’s class of 2018 may have devised a method of detecting glaucoma that could help those in countries with fewer eye care resources. Though still in its early stages (it has yet to receive adequate funding and FDA approval), the Virtual Reality Visual Field Analyzer.
Seven IBE students (Alli Rubin, Bryce Macomber, David Morency, Winston La, Zhuojie Ji, Sam Presti, and John St. Pierre) collaborated with ophthalmologist Avani Shah, M.D. to perfect their method, relying heavily on the resources in Lehigh’s virtual reality labs. Their goal was to make glaucoma testing more convenient and cost-effective for patients with limited access to medical care. This is a significant undertaking, seeing as, according to Glaucoma.org, glaucoma is one of the leading causes of blindness around the world. In fact, in African Americans, it is the second most common cause of blindness. Over 120,000 people in America are currently blind from the disease. Early diagnosis and treatment can help prevent further vision loss, thus significantly improving a patient’s prognosis.
After a year of research an experimentation, the Lehigh students and Shah were able to develop a working prototype for an apparatus that could perform the same function as stationary visual field analyzers.
“What this project aims to do is to provide a solution that is both accurate and portable, but at a low cause, using virtual reality,” La said. The team had faith that the the diagnostic tool could be beneficial in developing countries and other under-served areas.
The IBE program is offered by the Lehigh College of Business and Economics and the P.C. Rossi College of Engineering and Applied Science. The program allows students to graduate with degrees in both integrated business and engineering.The tool the students developed was the result of their capstone design course.
You can read more about Lehigh’s eye care research here.
