At NovaVision we are often asked by clinicians and therapists to discuss the differences between NeuroEyeCoach and other saccadic training programs, namely, those which appear to be specifically for saccadic training and those which have a saccadic training module within a therapy training suite of programs.
A lot of clinical data over the years has demonstrated that neurological rehabilitation cannot be safely guided and aided by non-specific, unsupervised interventions:
- Intervention should be evidence based, supported by rigorous research and clinical data.
- Intervention should be designed specifically for a clinical condition and should not try to address either multiple conditions or general conditions.
- Intervention should be supervised or self-adaptive with systematically developed protocols, as changes in brain-based healing that benefit one person may be detrimental to another.
These criteria are at the heart of the difference between NeuroEyeCoach and other saccadic or general therapy training programs, and is of key importance for clinicians and other assessing available alternatives.
NeuroEyeCoach was conceived on the fundamental concept of evidence-based medicine. It was developed based on the findings of a number of clinical studies specifically focused on patients with homonymous visual field loss and persistent visual disabilities. Each aspect of the program is validated by clinical findings. The main outcome of saccadic training demonstrated in the studies validating NeuroEyeCoach was a significant improvement in visual search performance accompanied by more efficient oculomotor strategies, and a reduction in visual disability as assessed by standardized questionnaires and behavioral measures.
Designed for Purpose
Historically, there has been a lack of an evidence based, clinical gold-standard registered medical device accessible to patients at home or in clinical settings. NeuroEyeCoach was developed to address this need.
Programs that were originally designed for a different purpose, such as improving athletes’ performance on visuo-motor tasks, cannot dissociate perceptual problems from those of limb function deficit; this makes it difficult to assess how much of the change in behavior is due to better visual scanning versus motor coordination. Similarly, programs that address more than one condition that really require specific interventions, such as vision and reading, can confuse treatment and lead to sub-optimal outcomes. Finally, saccadic programs that are merely a module in a broad suite of programs cannot provide the level of systematic intensity and patient engagement that is possible with a dedicated program.
NeuroEyeCoach is not aimed at producing non-specific general effects, but very specifically designed to target visual disorders resulting from neurological brain damage. Through the provision of a personalized therapy covering 36 progressive stages over a 2–4-week period, NeuroEyeCoach is designed to help improve scanning and eye movement efficiency in patients with homonymous visual field loss. It does not try to address any other clinical issue.
Systematic Protocols
An effective training program requires a set of systematically developed protocols, specific to neurologically visually impaired patients, to induce change and monitor progress. Alternative programs do not provide a specific plan for the management of patients or systematic protocols for the physician to change task difficulty. As a result, physicians are required to devise tests and there are no reliable measures of improvement provided.
NeuroEyeCoach is a systematic program that has multiple layers of difficulty, and which is self-adaptive, adjusting to the patient’s needs and stage of recovery. The program is personalized to the patient from the outset and by adapting to the patient’s progress the task difficulty is altered to encourage improvement. Conversely, should the task be too difficult, it is automatically modified to avoid fatigue and despondency. The criterion for success is also automated to ensure a standardized measurement. The program provides software-guided training steps, eliminating any need for ad hoc improvisation; it is therefore not subject to “physician interpretation” but does benefit from “physician supervision”.
Evidence Based – NeuroEyeCoach’s Key Differentiation
Lesions along the visual pathways can lead to areas of blindness, which can extend to an entire hemifield (hemianopia). Hemianopic patients often have abnormal eye-movements, adversely affecting their quality of life. Compensatory rehabilitation techniques are aimed at improving eye-movement efficacy enabling patients to make better use of their sighted field to compensate for the sight loss. NeuroEyeCoach was created to address this condition and was first fully validated in 2020 in alarge-scale peer-reviewed clinical study done by School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, UK, and the Stroke Division at theUniversity of Miami Miller School of Medicine and which was published in Cortex. The study was the largest done to date in the neuro-visual space and analyzed the results of approximately 300 patients who underwent the therapy. The study conclusively demonstrated that NeuroEyeCoach patients achieved major improvements within 2-3 weeks and that NeuroEyeCoach is a highly effective intervention. The findings showed that 87% of patients improved in search time and 80% had made less errors leading to a significant improvement in their ability to deal with their activities in daily living. In fact, patients with significant disability scores benefited the most with 79% of these patients saying they had less disability.
A more recent study followed on from this, being published May 2025 in Springer’s Experimental Brain Research. This study was a collaboration between the between School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, UK, the Neurorehabilitation unit of the Neuromotor and Cognitive Rehabilitation Research Centre, University of Verona, Italy, and NovaVision. Ethical approval was granted by the Psychology Ethics Committee, University of Aberdeen, UK. The study compared two patient groups that used NeuroEyeCoach; 95 consecutive patients who accessed the therapy at home and 31 consecutive patients who attended the clinic in Verona.
The study concluded that the NeuroEyeCoach “compensatory eye movement training was an effective tool for rehabilitation of vision loss when used in clinical settings or accessed remotely from home”.
NeuroEyeCoach led to improvements for home-based and clinic-based patients in both objective measures of visual function such as reduced visual search times, lower search errors, and faster completion of a cancellation task as well as reduced subjective reports of disability. No significant differences were identified between the effect of training on activities of daily living between the home-based and clinic-based groups.
Conclusion
While other programs may have merit as they relate to vision, they are not evidence based and not specifically designed to target scanning and eye movement efficiency in patients who have experienced visual disorders from brain damage; they also lack standardized measurements based on systematic protocols. The extensive clinical data discussed in this blog demonstrates that NeuroEyeCoach is highly effective and works equally well in both the home and in a clinical setting. A final key advantage for NeuroEyeCoach is its flexible delivery; patients can start the program while in a clinical environment and then complete it at home.
| NeuroEyeCoach | |
| Evidence-based | ✔ |
| Dedicated to rehabilitation for cerebral vision disorder | ✔ |
| Increasing levels of difficulty | ✔ |
| Systematic clinical intervention protocols | ✔ |
| Patients can complete at home | ✔ |
| FDA Registered and CE Marked as a medical device | ✔ |
