Important conversation: Who knows more about improving vision, a) the Federal Trade Commission or b) 60+ vision scientists

FTC Action Risks Sti­fling Inno­va­tion, Health App Inven­tor Says (Bloomberg):

“Fed­er­al enforce­ment action against the mak­ers of a mobile app that claims to improve users’ vision will have a chill­ing effect on sci­en­tists hop­ing to com­mer­cial­ize their research, the app’s inven­tor told Bloomberg BNA Feb. 24.

In par­tic­u­lar, the inven­tor said the type of sci­en­tif­ic infor­ma­tion the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion is requir­ing the app mak­er to pos­sess to make health claims about the prod­uct isn’t the best stan­dard for the app…

Sep­a­rate­ly, a health-care attor­ney said the FTC’s order (Dock­et No. C‑4567) against Car­rot Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Inc., the devel­op­er of the Ultimeyes app for mobile phones, also indi­cates the FTC, not the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion, will take the enforce­ment lead with regard to mobile health apps…

Essen­tial­ly all the momen­tum the com­pa­ny had was crip­pled by the FTC’s action, Seitz said, who added, his salary as a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor isn’t that large and his goal was to con­duct research to ben­e­fit pub­lic health.”

To learn more:

• The FTC final order against Car­rot Neurotechnology
• 77 pub­lic comments–most of them by vision scientists–supporting the company
• How to best civ­i­lize the mobile brain health and brain train­ing Wild West (Tip: Con­sumer edu­ca­tion may help more than pure regulation)