by Satina Richardson
Katherine Weise, OD, MBA, FAAO, a professor at the UAB School of Optometry, helped develop the Amblyopia Navigator Decision-Support Instrument (ANDI), a free tool that helps clinicians make evidence-based decisions when diagnosing and treating amblyopia in children. Weise, who serves as national network co-chair of the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Pediatric Eye Disease Investigator Group (PEDIG), is also director of UAB Eye Care's Pediatric Optometry Service.
The app serves as a valuable resource for eye doctors by guiding treatment decisions and supporting earlier detection of amblyopia. Because outcomes are often more favorable when amblyopia is identified and treated at a young age, the tool can help clinicians intervene sooner in a child’s development. It also assists eye care providers in developing treatment strategies for older children who may not have had access to care during the early years.
“There is a national shortage of pediatric eye doctors in the US, so we want to help eye doctors who don't have formal training in pediatric eye care to have tools to support their heart for helping children,” Weise said. A goal of her team is to create new formats to disseminate NIH results after the peer-reviewed papers are published.
She explained that eye doctors can enter the age and refractive error of the child, along with visual acuity. Next, the tool will recommend a glasses prescription and a treatment strategy for amblyopia. ANDI provides an interactive experience that can be completed in about five minutes. Recommendations the user-friendly tool provides are based on 27 years of PEDIG research, plus other key studies from other groups.
“The challenge was making it simple enough for busy clinic days yet comprehensive enough to meet as many specific needs of the child as possible,” she said.
Accessible on PEDIG’s website, ANDI was created in partnership with lead investigator Allison Summers, OD, MCR, FAAO, at Casey Eye Institute. The basis for the app was peer reviewed and published by the JAMA Ophthalmology.
The team viewed the National Institutes of Health-funded project as a gift to the next generation and prioritized broad access from the outset, ensuring doctors in remote areas or those working with only a smartphone could use the resource.
The next phase of ANDI focuses on monitoring how clinicians use the tool and conducting outcomes-based studies to determine whether it improves confidence in managing amblyopia in children. The team will also continue reviewing emerging research and updating the resource as new evidence becomes available. When clinical questions arise that are not adequately addressed in the published literature, the committee plans to pursue research that can help fill those gaps and strengthen the evidence base for amblyopia care.
Since becoming director in 2004, Weise has led the Pediatric Optometry Service at UAB Eye Care to numerous PEDIG honors, reflecting more than 20 years of leadership and a continued commitment to advancing pediatric eye care.