Effectiveness of the KidsVisionCheck mobile application in screening for amblyopia risk factors and visually significant refractive error.

KidsVisionCheck (KVC), a free photoscreening mobile application for iOS and Android released in 2022, aims to detect amblyopia risk factors (ARFs) in children. We evaluated its performance in a convenience sample of 120 pediatric ophthalmology clinic patients 12 months to 12 years of age. Patients were screened without optical correction using the application on an iPhone 14 Pro Max running iOS. Screening was followed by a dilated fundus examination with cycloplegic refraction. The 2021 AAPOS Vision Screening guidelines were used to assess for ARFs and visually significant refractive errors. The sensitivity of the application was 69.7%; the specificity, 58.7%. The positive predictive value in this patient population enriched for ophthalmic pathology was 52.4%, and the negative predictive value was 75.7%. KidsVisionCheck performed worse on these metrics than FDA-approved commercial instrument-based vision screeners.