[tech5000]

As I write this, I am attending SILMO 2017 optical trade show in Paris. I've been attending for a few years and what you see when talking to industry participants is that there is real aversion to business models that can disrupt the industry to lower costs. Frame suppliers that sell to brick-and-mortar shops will very often refuse to sell to e-commerce players, for fear of alienating their brick and mortar accounts for example. Opticians will often refuse to disclose pupillary distance, as a way to prevent their customer from purchasing elsewhere. Many states/provinces/countries have pre-Internet laws on the books that effectively disallow selling online, and efforts to amend those laws to keep pace with technology are aggressively derailed by special interest groups.

As noted elsewhere in this discussion, it was expensive before. Independent opticians feel attacked on one side by e-commerce, and on the other side by Essilor/Luxottica, chains in general, and big-box stores The real issue may be that they can't see the value in changing how they have always worked or that even if individual opticians are open to change, they are stuck in a supply chain that may hold exactly the opposite view.

[csomar]

The opticians are safe and sound for now but if I were in the business I'd be weary.

1. augmented reality could get real and good very fast. Lots of people will be comfortable testing glasses at home instead of checking the optician. Visiting the optician is the most awkward shop I go to.

2. How long before we have advanced cameras and the eye test could be done online? Well, I think a bit longer than I'd think but that's in the realm of possibilities.

[stereosky]

I feel that we need to see an uptick in automation/computer vision in the machines at the opticians before we're likely to see any sort of capability of the same at home. I would feel safer if the machines made diagnoses and there was an onsite optometrist/ophthalmologist for verification.

Also some conditions such as glaucoma can be difficult to test (http://www.glaucoma.org/glaucoma/diagnostic-tests.php). I remember one of the tests is to use a tonometer to check pressure by firing a puff of air at the eye, so for any of the tests today that give output values, these could feasibly be administered at home but wouldn't form a complete picture of our eye's health.

Interesting to think what an "opticians" could be in 20 years from now.

[walterbell]

State of the art in eye imaging sensors is the equipment used in Lasik surgery. Already being used to supplement smaller opticians with remote optometrists, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15374489

[Steve44]

> Opticians will often refuse to disclose pupillary distance, as a way to prevent their customer from purchasing elsewhere

As I understand their logic is that the PD is part of the fitting process for the glasses and not the optical prescription.

[walterbell]

Except that’s not true. PD varies by focal distance (far, near) and is unchanged by any frame.

Perhaps they obtain frame measurements at the same time as they measure PD. But the machine is capable of measuring PD alone.

Try another store/human.

[Steve44]

Over the years I've been to several opticians and they all measure the PD with a special looking ruler as part of the frame fitting measurements.

I don't doubt that it could be measured as part of the optical prescription process but it isn't as far as I've seen. I'm in the UK.

[walterbell]

This is what Lenscrafters (US) uses: http://www.uiwoptometryblog.org/2013/09/accufit/

[chewyland]

I'm currently in Jena, Germany eating a steak and minutes away from entering the Carl Zeiss museum of optics.