By now, attending the CES has become a yearly ritual for us. This year’s conference, as with every other year we’ve attended, was larger and busier than any other meeting you could imagine. The 180,000 attendees dwarf the largest meetings in eye care and give a real sense of how small we really are in the universe.

This year seemed a bit more muted than usual, with more iteration and refinement than innovation evident. Health and wellness played large at CES 2019 with a surge in devices, especially wearables. From self-recharging fitness monitors to Omron’s new FDA-cleared blood pressure-measuring watch, the technology was impressive. The self-monitoring theme corresponds with huge venture and equity capital investment in health care products and services focused on self-diagnosis and care.

Of note for health care providers, many of these self-care innovations are aimed at millennials, who, by and large, are more stressed and depressed, and who smoke more and sleep less than other population groups. When you add in digital eye strain and the myopia epidemic, primary care optometrists should be kept busy for the foreseeable future. Interestingly, other than the refined EyeQue VisionCheck, which now provides “eyeglass numbers” that some online vendors are converting into spectacle prescriptions, and several variations of connected and VR eyewear, there was not much new in eye care this year.

Areas where innovation was clearly evident were robotics and transportation. The Bell (Helicopter) Nexus is a flying taxi right out of the future. It’s slated to take off in 2020—pun intended. Speculation is that it may be the next iteration of Uber. While Tesla has been slowly (painfully for impatient Tesla owners) advancing their semi-autonomous driving technology, other automotive and tech companies are moving ahead at warp speed. From connected, advanced, assisted automobile cockpits to self-driving, completely autonomous vehicles, this year’s technology leaps were mind blowing. It clearly won’t be long before cars are driving us by themselves. Notable in the robot arena were Samsung’s Bots. Most impressive was the friendly appearing Bot Care, which measures blood pressure, heart rate, respiration and sleep, and detects falls. It can even call for help when needed.

Arthur B. Epstein, OD, FAAO Chief Medical Editor artepstein@optometricphysician.com