FitEyes Needs Your Input Now!

 We need to make some big decisions. And soon. I would like the FitEyes community -- you -- to get intimately involved in making these decisions. The issues before us are partly financial and technical, but they also extend to the core of what this community is about. So let me dive right in to the discussion and I look forward to your feedback and your support.

 

Please tell me what you think is the right future direction for FitEyes.

What does the FitEyes community mean to you?

What does FitEyes provide that you cannot obtain anywhere else?

Would you be willing to make a small donation to help us continue offering all this knowledge for free? You can donate immediately via PayPal using the email address in this link: donate to support FitEyes.com

What value do you personally receive from the community here? What do you contribute back?

What more would you like FitEyes to provide? In what ways could the website be improved?

How can we grow the community?

How can you help us create the kind of community that would fully meet your highest needs?

 

I have a vision for a much larger community with users taking much greater advantage of the website's technology. And I see self-tonometry growing exponentially until all ophthalmologists are educating every patient who is a a candidate for self-tonometry about its benefits and how to get started. Self-tonometry revolutionizes a glaucoma patient's health and vision care. I want to see everyone who currently practices self-tonometry speaking out more on this website, educating other glaucoma patients, and blogging about their own experiences.

Unlike any other patient-created community I know of, the FitEyes community has conducted valuable original research and has discovered important knowledge. I continuously receive emails from readers who have read information available only on FitEyes and have already received benefits in their lives from applying this knowledge. However, I would love to see more of those people become active in the community. When someone sends me an email, I learn from it and I appreciate it, but no one else in the community sees it. In contrast, when someone makes a blog post or a forum post, the entire community benefits. I want to see us spread our knowledge and help everyone.

This website currently represents about 1% of the knowledge we have accumulated. We have one member here who has invested over $50,000 of his own money in advanced medical equipment to conduct vision research. This person is an unbelievable resource. Are you aware of this? Do you realize how unique this is? We have many members who own their own tonometers (at significant investments) and conduct daily intraocular pressure measurements. We have many extremely dedicated, smart and motivated people here. There is no patient community in the world that can rival what we have here. The knowledge and resources are truly astounding. Yet I am disappointed that so little of that knowledge gets shared with the whole community. How can we do more? One idea is that I would like to see the FitEyes website take a more active role in the publication of new medical research. With a modest amount of funding, we could create truly profound results. I know because much of the foundational work has already been done.

Together with two other authors, I have recently published an article about self-tonometry in a leading medical journal. That's something we could do more of, but it isn't my highest priority. Sure, it is prestigious to have articles published in medical journals, but I am more motivated to publish truly leading-edge knowledge that is more advanced than what the typicallly conservative medical journals will (at this time) consider publishing. And I want to fast-track that knowledge right to the people who can benefit from it immediately -- to you. My self-tonometry journal article is already about a year old -- and it hasn't even hit the presses yet. And the article doesn't even include the most advanced self-tonometry knowledge that I have written about here on FitEyes. I want to move faster that that system allows. And I want to remain focused on the safe, natural, non-invasive and non-drug areas of medical care that over underserved by the mainstream. Would you supportFitEyes to make more of this possible?

There are several ways you can support FitEyes and take this community in the direction we all decide we want it to go. If you can blog or otherwise contribute content, please do so right away. If you own a tonometer, your voice is important. Don't underestimate the importance of your voice if you are fortunate enough to be able to conduct rigorous self-tonometry research. However, I understand that not everyone has the time or the inclination to participate actively on the website or to be disciplined in their self-tonometry research. There are other options for supporting FitEyes, including making modest financial donations to help offset the expenses of operating this website.

Those of you who cannot afford tonometers could potentially sponsor small studies designed to answer specific questions of interest to you and to the community. Your contribution of just $25 to $100 could pave the way to original research involving medical equipment with a collective cost well in excess of $100,000. We could do amazing research on specific nutritional supplements and intraocular pressure, for example. I know this is a topic that interests a lot of people. Reliable research on certain supplements is completely non-existent. As a community, we are uniquely positioned to conduct research like this. If you do not own a tonometer, imagine how much value you could derive from being able to ask a group of people with tonometers to help find answers to the questions that main stream medicine refuses to pursue? We can do that here, but we need support from you to make it happen.

If the community want us to expand our research and to undertake direct publication of new knowledge here, we will need more substantial financial support. (And I don't expect this support will come from the industry. The support needs to come from the community, from you.) Over the years that this site has been running, one generous member has made a significant donation. I cannot expression my appreciation enough to this generous and supportive member. I am amazed by his generousity. But no successful community can reach its full potential and best serve all its members when only a single member provides financial support. In fact, as generous as that donation was, we have ongoing operating expenses that are not being covered.

The FitEyes website runs on a powerful technology platform, including both the software and the webserver. We made the decision to use this powerful platform in order to provide advanced technology to our user community -- to you. All these features have been made available to everyone in the FitEyes community for free. How is that possible? It is possible because I have been paying all these costs myself. Currently, web hosting costs well over $100/mo (for a VPS with 1GB RAM). The software license cost was almost $1000 (and the renewal/upgrade fee is $5000 now).

One immediate technology decision we need make relates to the webserver and software. I would like to see us convert to open source software. This eliminates the software licensing costs (although we should, in turn, donate something to the community supporting the open source software we choose). Furthermore, it allows us to scale back the hosting costs significantly. Monthly web hosting costs would drop by at least half. However, converting the existing FitEyes website to a new technology platform will cost several thousand dollars. (The current bids are as high as $4000, but we hope to find a competent team at a cost of not more than $2000. But first we need to raise $2000!)

The technology migration involves a complex database conversion and more. We need to start this right away because the current hosting agreement is paid only through January. Please consider making a donation now to help us hire the developers immediately so we can get the new open source version of FitEyes up and running before January. This is a big project and it has to be done with great care to avoid losing information from the current FitEyes website. Please help us ensure, through your donation, that we can transition to a more cost effective technology platform so that we can continue to provide everything we offer to the entire community for free.

Any donation amount will be very helpful. Please consider giving any amount you can afford. You can donate via PayPal using the email address in this link: donate now. And please jump into the conversation about the future of FitEyes! Thank you.