• What problem does your design idea solve? Amblyopia.
Amblyopia (lazy eye) occurs when the brain does not fully acknowledge the images seen by the amblyopic eye, if one eye sees clearly and the other sees a blur, the good eye and brain will inhibit (block, suppress, ignore) the eye with the blur. One of the treatment for Amblyopia is eye patching. The problem is sometimes the patient doesn’t feel comfortable or could feel embarrassed to wear an eye patch all day. My idea is creating a contact lens that can temporarily block the vision of one eye yet no one can notice the patient is eye-patching.
• What are the potential benefits?
When the patient wears my blind contact lens in the healthy eye, this eye will temporarily be "blind," just like when patient would wear an eye patch.
• How is your idea novel or an improvement on what is currently available in the marketplace?
Currently available in the marketplace are the prescription contact lens to be used to correct near and farsightedness, and also available are the cosmetic ones, transparent and colored, to purposely change the iris color as a fashion trend or just for fun. There is no contact lens that can act as an eye patch for treatment of amblyopia, this blind contact lens therefore should be available only through eye doctor prescription.
• Where would this idea be applied?
This contact lens should be available only through eye doctor prescription to treat the amblyopia.
•What is the market potential?
This contact lens can be marketable because amblyopia is one of the most popular eye issue for the younger age students so there is a need of this product out there.
•How does your design work?
The blind contact lens is a round piece of non-transparent contact lens, that has the imitating image of the patient's iris and the pupil. Apply the blind contact lens is simply just like how people apply the regular contact lens. Only different is the blind contact lens is a non-transparent lens, it blocks the light to the eye as if the patient is wearing an eye patch. Because it has the same color of the patient’s real iris, with a black dot in the center represents the pupil so when the patient wearing this special lens in one eye, no one would know that eye is actually being eye-patched.
•How would your product be manufactured?
The product can be manufactured just the same way as regular contact lens.
•How would the production cost compare with products already in the marketplace?
The production would be the same as the regular contact lens, just add the color pigment to the lens to imitate the patient’s iris and pupil.
Please see the diagram attached. Thank you for viewing my paper.
Voting
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ABOUT THE ENTRANT
- Name:Oanh La
- Type of entry:individual
- Profession:
- Number of times previously entering contest:never
- Oanh's favorite design and analysis tools:SolidWorks, AutoCAD, pencils and sketch papers
- For managing CAD data Oanh's company uses:None
- Oanh's hobbies and activities:hiking, tennis
- Oanh is inspired by:Little things around me
- Software used for this entry:AutoCAD, color pencils
- Patent status:none