Renew Your Contact Lens Prescription at Home With Simple Contacts
The only reason I stopped wearing contact lenses was because I was too lazy to renew the prescription. Stores only have strict guidelines for selling you if your prescription is valid, and most are only valid for two years. But now there are online tools that allow you to renew your contact lens prescription from the comfort of your home.
Simple Contacts is a new free application that allows you to take a basic eye exam on your iPhone. It does not analyze your eye’s refractive error or anything like that, nor does it replace a complete eye exam. The sole purpose of this app is to easily update an existing recipe that you are sure still works. (To use the service, you need to have completed a full vision examination within the last four years.) Therefore, this service is intended for people with healthy, low-risk eyes.
I’ve tried it myself recently. It works roughly as you’d expect: the app literally shows you an eye diagram and asks you to read the letters aloud, as with any normal eye exam, and records that you do it. The test is then sent to the doctor for review. Of course, it would be foolish to read the phone that is right in front of you. You must stand ten feet from the phone when taking the test; if you are not far enough, you will be asked to take the test again. (It’s a little unnerving to send a video of yourself out into the unknown, but they say it’s stored on a HIPAA- compliant system like any medical data.) And that’s basically it. The doctor will review the test results and your contact details will be sent within about a week.
There are a few minor caveats. You cannot take a test without also purchasing contact information – you take the exam and place an order right away, and the doctor will write a prescription for $ 10. It is currently limited to 20 states, but of course they will expand into new regions.
Joel Wish , founder of Simple Contacts, told me that there are a lot of features currently in development. Right now, you cannot use the contact ordering app if you already have a valid prescription. You can if you just email them and I really think their customer support is very nice and responsive. This feature will be added shortly. After all, they can also let you renew the prescription (for a fee) without ordering anything. Of course, there is also a version for Android.
Simple Contacts isn’t the only service that offers updated recipes online. There is also Opternative , which offers prescriptions for glasses or contact lenses for $ 40. I haven’t tried it myself, but their exam is actually more thorough; they can define your recipe from scratch instead of updating the old script. But if all you need is to renew your current lenses with a recently expired prescription, Simple Contacts will do the job.
Simple contacts | ITunes App Store