Tele-ophthalmology is a branch of telemedicine that delivers eye care through digital medical equipment and telecommunications technology. There are various forms of teleophthalmology. Smartphones and tablets currently considered a method of diagnosis and sources of ocular information.Aims: to compare visual acuity as measured by the Ocular Check application and visual field as assessed by the MRF macular lite application with our ophthalmology clinical examination protocols.
Methods and Materials:A total of 50 subject's aged 17-27 years old with no ocular health problem were recruited from King Saud University Campus in Riyadh. Full case history was collected from all subjects followed by online examination for visual acuity using the Ocular Check vision app and visual field by the MRF Macular lite app. Moreover, all subjects underwent full ophthalmological clinical examination including the visual acuity using Snellen chart and visual field using static octopus 900. Then a Comparison between the results of online and clinical testing was performed.Results: Measurements revealed significant differences in visual field with no statistically significant difference in mean visual acuity between online and clinical methods of measurement. Furthermore, clinical methods outperform online measurements in terms of mean deviation, false negative, test time, and visual acuity, but online measurements registered higher false positive values Conclusion: teleophthalmology has high rate of testability and provides promising way of testing however it cannot replace clinical examinations. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to evaluate the long-term effect of applying this technology.