AOA 2023: Improving patient experience in vision therapy rooms with new technology

Mark Taub, OD, MS, FAAO, FCOVD, caught up with Optometry Times to tell us all about his talk, "Technology in the Vision Therapy Room," which he presented during the 2023 AOA Optometry's Meeting in Washington, DC.

Video Transcript

Editor's note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Mark Taub, OD, MS, FAAO, FCOVD:

Hi, I'm Dr. Mark Taub. I am the chief of vision therapy and rehabilitation at Southern College of Optometry. Yesterday, I gave a talk titled, Technology in the Vision Therapy Room.

I love giving talks on technology topics. Too many times, vision therapy is thought of as kind of this boring and a beat on a string kind of thing. The use of technology is flexible for the patients, flexible for the clinician, [and] we can change a lot of the parameters in the techniques that we use. It's dynamic. It's a lot of fun for the patients. We will often use it as carrots for getting them to perform some of the more boring techniques.

We have huge touchscreen light boards, [and] activities that you can work with vergence, accommodation, eye movements, [and] perception. We've got augmented reality, virtual reality, [and] eye movement trackers. We've got lots of toys to play with. It helps the patients with learning what their eyes are doing. There's a lot of feedback. Everything is touchscreen, so they're using their tactile system. It's auditory, so they're using their hearing just as feedback for their visual system.

Technology is a great adjunct to the traditional therapy techniques, instead of a replacement. The traditional activities are all in free space, and a lot of the technology is also in free space. So I like to use it, not instead of but, I'd like to use it along with my traditional therapy.