House calls were once standard practice for physicians. In 1930, approximately 40 percent of patient encounters occurred in the patient’s home, according to a 2011 article in the journal American Academy of Family Physicians. Over the years, that percentage declined sharply, partly due to a lack of funding by insurance companies.

Yet house calls are beginning to make a comeback. There are two key reasons for this. One is higher Medicare reimbursements for doctors who make home visits. The other is a growing population of time-pressed consumers who are willing to pay for such personalized service. To serve that potentially huge market, two recent startups, Pager and Medicast, have begun marketing smartphone apps that enable consumers to connect with doctors who make house calls.

Now a couple of optical companies have begun testing new approaches to providing personalized services. Earlier this year, Shamir opened a micro-lab in Philadelphia called Inotime that is processing prescriptions for local ECPs and then delivering the finished eyeglasses the same day to either the doctor’s office or to the consumer if they are within the central city area.

QSpex recently launched a new business model that involves casting lenses on demand in a regional service center. ECPs can order the lenses through a proprietary online system and send the patient’s frame to the center using a special messenger service. Customers will receive the lenses on the same day they are ordered and have them personally delivered to either their office or directly to the patient via QSpex’s fleet of artistically wrapped and branded, environmentally friendly Mercedes-produced smart cars. And QSpex is offering a “concierge” service that allows ECPs to have an optician personally deliver and fit a patient’s glasses.

Also, at least one major vision care company is considering a service in which an ECP would perform an in-home refraction and eyeglass fitting using portable measuring devices.

As the trend toward mobile health rapidly accelerates, look for these types of personalized vision services to become more prevalent in the near future.

Andrew Karp
Group Editor, Lenses and Technology
[email protected]