EyeDecide app review: find specialists and learn all about the human eye

Introduction

EyeDecide is a wonderful award-winning educational app for eye anatomy, conditions, and treatments. It also claims to help the user find a specialist. The Anatomy screen makes great use of multi-finger gestures. Be sure to pull across the Control Options tab to access all functions. Conditions and Treatments screens present text as well a visual component to assist in the learning process.

Anatomy

The Anatomy portion of this app was delightful to explore. The anatomy screen starts off with a picture of the eyeball and various components. This is a single screen in landscape orientation with a pull ‘across’ menu tab on the right sidebar. This gives access to the control options and instructions regarding the multi-gesture functions. Don’t forget to play with the joystick while different layers are displayed.  

Conditions and Treatments

The Conditions screen displays eight common ailments of the eye. When clicking on a single condition a dedicated screen comes up with a graphic and text. The graphic displays a “Play” button to start the visual learning aid. The text portion explains symptoms, causes and treatments. The visual learning aid typically has an animation or video to demonstrate the onset of symptoms, which I thought was pretty cool.  Some of these videos have a game-like element, requiring you to perform a simple drag task to initiate the animation. The “Pink Eye” screen is particularly gruesome and indirectly emphasizes the need for simple hygiene.  

Currently, the treatment section only has one treatment listed.  This is also presented in a textbook-like manner with a write up and an interactive window. The text portion of the treatment is clearly written using simple language, which will greatly assist in retaining information. The interactive portion is game-like, presenting a visual component of the treatment. In this case, a dry eye is presented with a bottle of eye drops. Dragging the eye drop bottle onto the dry eye will initiate animation. 

Finding a Specialist

Specialist Locator is not currently working. When attempting to access this page, the app reports “undergoing scheduled maintenance.” The write up in the iTunes review claims ”a proprietary directory of specialists based on the user's location with powerful tools to search, sort, and filter based on insurance, language spoken, specialty and more.” Too bad this feature isn't working.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Beautiful Anatomy section
• Excellent Conditions section

Cons

• Specialist Locator portion of app is undergoing “scheduled maintenance”
• Only one treatment listed

Final Thoughts

EyeDecide is a wonderful app for all users. This is particularly appealing to anyone who has taken anatomy or biology courses; I wish this was available when I was going through school. Even with the “Find a Specialist” screen not functioning, I will keep this app on my iPad.