Thomson Near Chart: Wireless Near Vision Testing Reviewed

Every dispensing room has one: a drawer of yellowing test types and a Mallett unit that has seen better decades. Nobody quite trusts them anymore, and nobody has got round to replacing them either.

Near vision testing has a specific, familiar problem. You want to show the patient a chart. The chart lives on your tablet. To change from one test to the next, you have to take the tablet back, tap through the menu, and hand it over again. Multiply that by every near test in a routine, and a ten-minute check starts eating into the next appointment.

Thomson Software Solutions has built a system aimed squarely at that problem. It's called the Thomson Near Chart, and the pitch is simple: control a huge library of near vision tests on any phone or tablet, from your PC, with no cable and no passing the device back and forth.

What it actually does

The Thomson Near Chart is an app that runs on a Windows 10 (or later) PC. It connects to a tablet or smartphone via Thomson's own cloud server, linking the two devices with a QR code or a link generated by the app. Once connected, the PC app checks the phone or tablet's resolution and runs a short calibration to determine the exact screen size.

That calibration step matters more than it sounds. Once the system knows the physical dimensions of the screen, it builds test images sized correctly for that specific device and sends them over the cloud link, where they appear on the patient's screen almost instantly. The clinician never touches the tablet again once it's handed to the patient. Every test, every change, every adjustment happens from the PC.

The tests themselves

The system covers a wide spread of near vision assessments, and each one is customisable rather than fixed. In practice, that means selecting a test from the PC and having it appear on the patient's device within moments, then adjusting size, contrast or format without asking for the device back.

It also works through a standard tablet browser if you'd rather not install anything extra on the patient device. Thomson offers free apps for both Android and iOS for practices that want the fuller experience, and either route connects through the same cloud link.

Where it comes from

Thomson Software Solutions has been building vision assessment software since the early 2000s. The Thomson Test Chart was one of the first computerised distance charts on the market and is now reportedly running in more than 8,000 ophthalmology and optometry consulting rooms across the UK. The company also produced some of the earliest near-vision apps for iPhone and iPad, including iChart 2000 and Vision Toolbox.

Those earlier apps solved the "which chart" problem but not the "who's holding the tablet" problem. Every test change still meant retrieving the device from the patient's hands. The Near Chart is Thomson's answer to that, built around the cloud link rather than a local app switching tests on the same screen.

What it costs

The Near Chart runs on subscription. A first licence is £18 a month, or £195 a year, plus VAT, and covers installation of the PC app on a single computer. That one licence connects to an unlimited number of tablets and phones, so the cost doesn't scale with the number of devices you use in clinic. The subscription includes installation, training, and ongoing phone, email and TeamViewer support, along with updates as they come out.

Additional licences for a second or third consulting room within the same practice come in cheaper, at £15 a month or £162 a year plus VAT.

What this means for an independent practice specifically

A multiple with a standardised testing protocol across forty branches doesn't lose much sleep over the ten seconds it takes to swap a test screen. Volume absorbs that inefficiency. An independent practice running a longer, more thorough near vision assessment as part of a genuinely unhurried eye exam feels every one of those interruptions, because the whole point of independent practice is the time you spend with the patient, not the number of patients you push through.

There's a second angle worth naming directly. Kit like this is not usually the deciding factor in whether a patient chooses you over the practice down the road. But it is part of what a patient notices, consciously or not, during the appointment: whether the equipment feels up to date, whether the clinician is fumbling with a device or working smoothly through a routine they've clearly done a thousand times. An independent practice competing against a corporate multiple's marketing budget has to win on the quality of the actual clinical experience. Small things like this are part of that case.

The subscription model is also worth a closer look before signing up. Unlimited devices on one licence is a genuinely good deal if you run several tablets in a busy testing room. But it's a recurring cost, not a one-off purchase, and any equipment decision for an independent practice should be weighed against what else that monthly spend could do — a saving toward a second consulting room, a marketing push, or simply margin retained in a market where NHS sight test fees still don't cover the true cost of delivering the test.

If you're weighing up an equipment investment as part of a wider growth plan for your practice, that's exactly the conversation you should have properly.

Book a Free 20-Minute Practice Growth Call