Characterization of technologies in digital health applied in vision care

Abstract

Digital health technology is increasingly becoming part of the evolution of health services, not only for the innovation of equipment but also in support of health processes. Eye health is one of the areas that most explores this field, being a reference in different segments of digital health and the use of applied technological resources. Thus, the purpose of this review was to analyse and characterize the development of research in digital health applied to vision sciences in the last decade. An exploratory-quantitative review of the research based on studies indexed in the SCOPUS database in the last 10 years, which related aspects of digital health technologies with their use within the vision sciences, was conducted. The research results were filtered, including journal articles and excluding those not directly related to vision. The final sample was categorized and classified according to the technology used, the relationship with eye/visual health and its practical applications. A total of 1069 reports were identified (32.09% published since 2021). "Artificial Intelligence" (77.74%) was the most frequent technological tool cited, and posterior segment (68.10%) most eye structure studied, being diabetic retinopathy (27.88%) the main studied disease. The vast majority have potential for clinical use (93.73%), especially those aimed at supporting decision-making. Technologies in digital health in the vision sciences have had a huge growth in recent years, with emphasis on artificial intelligence applied to the posterior segment, but with a low development of studies aimed at using this technology in primary visual care.