ForeseeHome: The At-Home AMD Monitoring Device Your Doctor Prescribed
ForeseeHome at a Glance
The device runs quietly in the background of your care. It never replaces your own eyes. Call your eye doctor the same day if you notice any of these changes, in either eye:
- Straight lines, such as a door frame, start to look wavy or bent.
- A new blank, gray or blurry patch sits in the middle of your view.
- You have decreased vision in one eye that came on over hours or days.
- Faces or print suddenly look smaller or crooked in one eye.
Wavy straight lines are a warning sign of late macular degeneration. The National Eye Institute says to see an eye doctor right away.1 Most of these calls end in good news. If the cause is the wet form, care that starts early is linked to better vision than care that starts late.2 So the call costs you little, and it can be worth a lot.
ForeseeHome is a small tabletop device you use at home. A monitoring service watches your results for you. You test one eye at a time for about three minutes a day. The device measures distortion and small blind spots with hyperacuity perimetry, a way of picking up tiny bends in a line of dots.3 You are not reading letters on a chart. You click on the part of a dotted line that looks bumpy to you.
Because your eye doctor ordered the program for you, they have already judged that your stage of AMD fits it. The trial that tested the device enrolled people who could still read 20/60 or better, and who had large deposits under the retina in both eyes, or in one eye with advanced disease in the other.4 If you are unsure why it was suggested for you, ask. That is a fair question.
How the Test Works and What It Is Watching For
The device looks for early signs that dry macular degeneration has turned wet. Wet AMD, called neovascular AMD by doctors, is a less common late form. It usually causes faster vision loss than the dry form.1 New vessels grow under the retina and leak, and the fluid that collects swells and warps the layer of cells you see with.2 That warping shows up as wavy vision (clinical term: metamorphopsia), or as a small missing patch (clinical term: scotoma).
Your eyes are unusually good at noticing a line that is out of true. Electronic home monitors use that skill, which doctors call hyperacuity or vernier acuity, to map where your central vision is distorted.2 The screen shows a line of dots with a small wave in it, and you click where the wave sits. Doing that many times draws a picture of the macula, not a single yes or no.
Both tools ask the same question, and the paper grid is still useful. Guidelines describe checking one eye at a time with an Amsler grid or with electronic home monitoring. They also note that study of the electronic devices is still going on.2 The difference is who judges. With a grid, you decide whether today looks worse than last week. The device compares today against your own recorded pattern instead.
Nothing useful happens until the system learns what normal looks like for you. Your first sessions build that baseline. Every later test is scored against it, not against a general standard. That is why one odd result on a tired evening does not set off alarms. It is also where real use often breaks down. In one review of four retina practices, about one in four of the eyes that tried never built a usable baseline.3 Ask the office to check that yours registered.
Getting Set Up and Preparing for Each Test
The device is shipped to your home with instructions, and a support team walks you through the first session. Your eye doctor's office sends the order, and the monitoring service handles setup and coaching. Before the box arrives, ask the office two things: who to phone when the device misbehaves, and how the practice will reach you if an alert lands on a Friday afternoon.
Use the same near-vision glasses every time, whichever pair your doctor tells you to use, because swapping between readers changes what the screen looks like. Sit at the distance the instructions give, in a room with steady light and no glare. Cover the eye you are not testing rather than just closing it. These small habits keep your results comparable.
Tie the test to something you already do each day, such as morning coffee. How often you test matters. In the real-world review, about half of patients used the device less often than advised, and roughly a quarter had stopped within a year.3 Nobody keeps a perfect record. Aim for most days. Tell your doctor honestly how often you really test, and treat a missed day as just that.
What Happens During a ForeseeHome Test
You switch the device on and cover one eye, then look at a target in the center of the screen. A dotted line flashes across your view, and a few dots along it are nudged out of line. You click the mouse where you saw the bump. The device repeats this across your central vision, then asks you to swap eyes.
Most people call it a short, slightly odd video game rather than an eye exam. Each eye takes about three minutes, so a two-eye session runs around six minutes.3 There is no bright light, no eye drops and no dilation, so you can drive afterwards. Some people find the first week tiring while the pattern becomes familiar. That usually settles.
Devices jam, connections drop, and some days your eye will not hold steady. None of that is an emergency, and none of it means your vision has changed. Call the support line for anything mechanical. What does deserve a call to your eye doctor is a change you can see yourself, whether or not the device agrees that day.
Understanding Your Results and What an Alert Means
You do not get a score to read, and that is on purpose. Results go to a monitoring center. When they shift meaningfully from your own baseline, the center raises an alert and contacts your eye doctor and you, so a visit can be set up.3 Your job is to test often and to answer the phone. Deciding what a change means belongs to your eye doctor, working from an exam and scans.
An alert is an invitation to be examined soon. It is not a diagnosis, and it does not mean you have wet AMD. In everyday practice, most alerts turn out not to be new wet disease. In the four-practice review, the great majority were false alarms.3 That is the trade a screening tool makes. A scan that turns out clear costs you an afternoon, and that is the price of catching the ones that are not clear.
Expect a fairly ordinary retina visit, usually within days rather than weeks. Your vision is measured, your pupils are likely dilated, and a scan shows whether there is fluid where none should be. If things look stable, you carry on testing at home. If there is new activity, your doctor talks treatment through with you. Starting that talk early is the point.
The device watches for one change in your central vision. It says nothing about glaucoma, cataract, or your side vision. It cannot see the back of your eye, and it cannot rule out disease. Guidelines still ask for a scheduled exam every 6 to 18 months at this stage, alongside self-testing at home.2 Home monitoring is an extra layer, laid on top of ordinary care.
Risks, Limits and a Realistic Picture of the Benefit
The test carries no physical risk worth worrying about. Nothing touches your eye, no drops go in, and no light is bright enough to do harm. The real risks are indirect. False alarms cost you visits and worry, and a device that quietly stops being used offers false comfort. Raise both with your doctor.
The trial behind this approach assigned 1,520 people at high risk to home monitoring plus usual care, or to usual care alone. It was stopped early once the benefit was clear.4 People using the device had lost a median of 4 letters of vision by the time wet AMD was found, against 9 letters in the other group.4 The figures below are group results from that trial. They are not a forecast for any one person.
| What was measured | Home device group | Usual care group |
|---|---|---|
| People randomly assigned | 763 | 757 |
| Median letters of vision lost by the time wet AMD was found | 4 letters | 9 letters |
| Eyes still reading 20/40 or better when wet AMD was found | 40 of 46 | 18 of 29 |
Results outside a trial have been more mixed, and you deserve to know that first. In a review of 775 eyes at four retina practices, most alerts were false alarms, and some eyes turned wet without the device flagging it.3 Read that as a reason to keep your visits and keep reporting symptoms. It is not a reason to turn the device down. A tool that misses some changes still catches others.
The effort makes sense because untreated wet AMD does not stand still. Pooled results from 53 studies of 4,362 untreated people showed vision falling steadily. About 42 of every 100 lost six or more lines of vision by three years.5 Today's injection treatments have changed that picture a great deal, and finding the disease early improves how vision turns out.2 AMD also does not take all of your sight. Side vision remains.1
Ask about money before the device ships, because coverage is uneven. Some health plans class home monitoring for AMD as experimental and do not pay for it. What you owe depends on your own plan.6 Ask the practice to confirm your benefits in writing, ask what the monthly cost would be if your plan says no, and ask what happens to billing if you stop partway through.
When to Call, Who to Call, and Keeping Your Regular Exams
Some changes should never wait for the device to notice them. Guidelines direct that patients be told to report decreased vision, new distortion or loss of vision promptly.2 Call the same day if straight lines turn wavy, if a new dark patch appears in your central view, or if reading gets suddenly harder in one eye. You are not being a nuisance. This is the call your doctor wants.
Send practical problems to the support line rather than to your doctor. That covers a device that will not switch on, a session that keeps failing, a move to a new address, or a long trip away. Telling the service you will be away for a month is better than letting a gap in testing look like something it is not.
A daily test at home and a dilated exam answer different questions. Guidelines ask for a return exam every 6 to 18 months for people with intermediate AMD, or with advanced disease in one eye, who have no new symptoms. They ask for a prompt exam whenever new symptoms appear.2 Keep those visits even during a long run of normal home results. A quiet device is reassuring, but it is not a look inside your eye.
Questions People Ask About ForeseeHome
No. The device compares today's test against your own earlier results, so it is built to notice change rather than to name a disease. Wet AMD is established in the office, with an examination and imaging of the retina such as a scan or an angiogram.2 If one eye is already being treated for wet AMD, that eye is usually followed with office visits and scans instead. Ask your doctor which eye, if either, the program is meant to watch.
Nothing bad happens after a few missed days, and no alarm is raised for absence alone. The worry is a longer drift, because a device sitting unused cannot notice anything. Steady testing across the week is what the system is built around. If life has pushed testing aside, just start again, and mention the gap at your next visit so your doctor knows how much weight to give your home results.
Follow what your doctor prescribed, which may be one eye or both. Some people are watched in a single eye, because the other has already been treated or does not qualify. Testing takes about three minutes an eye, so a two-eye session runs near six minutes. If the routine is not fitting into your day, say so at your next visit rather than quietly shortening it. The office can only work with what it knows.
No, and it is not meant to be. Office testing measures how much detail you can read on a chart. It also looks at the retina directly, through a widened pupil or with a scan. The home test maps distortion across your central vision and compares it with your own baseline. The two look at related but different things. That is why one is not a substitute for the other.
Some people find daily testing reassuring. Others find it a daily reminder of a worry they would rather set down. Both reactions are common, and neither is wrong. If the testing is making your days harder, tell your eye doctor, because the goal is a monitoring plan you can live with. Stopping the program is a fair option. So is switching to a simpler routine, such as a paper grid check.
That depends on how much vision the tested eye still has, and it is your doctor's call. The approach was studied in people who could still read reasonably well. The test needs you to hold steady on a target and to see a fine line of dots. If an eye can no longer do that reliably, the results stop meaning much. Your doctor may then move that eye to office-based follow-up instead.
More Questions About Living With Home Monitoring
Yes, and in many homes that is what makes daily testing realistic. A helper can set the device up, cover the right eye and keep the routine on track. They can phone support when something goes wrong. Guidelines suggest that a family member or care assistant prompt self-testing when a patient also has memory or thinking trouble.2 The clicking has to be yours, because the device records what your eye sees.
No, and this is the most important thing to take from the program. Home monitoring adds a layer between visits. It does not replace one. A scheduled exam every 6 to 18 months remains the guideline standard at this stage, with a prompt exam whenever new symptoms appear.2 Your doctor also uses those visits to check for other conditions the device knows nothing about, such as glaucoma or cataract.
It depends on your plan and on where you live, and there is no single national rule to point you to. At least one large health plan still treats AMD home monitoring as experimental and will not cover it.6 So ask the prescribing office to check your benefits before the device ships. Ask what you would owe each month if coverage is refused, so no bill takes you by surprise.
Take the call seriously and get seen where you are. An alert means an exam should happen soon, and a retina specialist where you are staying can do that. Phone your own office first if you can, because they can send records and advise on urgency. Tell the monitoring service in advance about long trips, so your testing pattern is read correctly.
Take this list to your next visit, and write the answers on it while you are in the room.
- Which of my eyes are you asking me to monitor, and why that one?
- How often do you want me to test, and what counts as too little?
- Who in your office receives an alert, and how quickly will someone call me?
- What should I do about a vision change if my last home test looked normal?
- How often do you still want to see me for a dilated exam?
- What will this cost me each month if my insurance declines to cover it?
- At what point would you tell me the device is no longer worth continuing?
- National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health (2025). Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD): stages, symptoms and warning signs.
- American Academy of Ophthalmology, Preferred Practice Pattern, approved by the Board of Trustees September 2024 (2024). Age-Related Macular Degeneration Preferred Practice Pattern (Monitoring and Early Detection; Table 6 follow-up recommendations).
- Yu HJ, Kiernan DF, Eichenbaum D, Sheth VS, Wykoff CC. Ophthalmology Retina (retrospective review of 775 eyes at four US retina practices) (2021). Home Monitoring of Age-Related Macular Degeneration: Utility of the ForeseeHome Device for Detection of Neovascularization.
- AREDS2-HOME Study Research Group, Ophthalmology (National Eye Institute sponsored trial, 44 centers, 1,520 participants) (2014). Randomized Trial of a Home Monitoring System for Early Detection of Choroidal Neovascularization (HOME Study).
- Wong TY, Chakravarthy U, Klein R, et al. Ophthalmology (53 studies, 4,362 untreated patients) (2008). The Natural History and Prognosis of Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration: A Systematic Review of the Literature and Meta-analysis.
- Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network joint medical policy, effective 1 November 2025 (2025). Medical Policy: Home Monitoring Device for Age-Related Macular Degeneration.