This software program was developed by Skip Charles using the expertise of the late Dr. Philip Richmond for the use of Friends of ASAPROSAR (Asociacion Salvadoreña Pro Salud Rural -- Salvadoran Association for Rural Health).
Friends of ASAPROSAR run an annual eye clinic in Santa Ana, El Salvador and maintain a permanent on-site inventory of approximately 10,000 pairs of used glasses. Phil Richmond was a founder of the program, which started in 1986.
Most of the dispensing of glasses is done by lay volunteers. At the beginning the inventory was stored by gender, add, right-eye sphere and cylinder. Finding glasses proved to be time-consuming and difficult. So we developed the program to inventory the glasses, giving each a unique number. The program then takes a prescription and looks for the best match considering spherical equivalents and axis tolerances, which depend on cylinder. It is as though Phil is sitting on your shoulder and helping you choose.
The search for a specific prescription from the inventory of used eyeglasses begins with a screen like this:
Results of the search are presented in a table like this:
We make the program available as free shareware. The program has been adopted by several VOSH (Volunteer Optometric Services for Humanity) groups.
To download the Richmond Eyeglass Inventory Matching System computer program and associated instruction manual, use the links at the top-right of this page.
After downloading REIMSFIL.zip and REIMSPRG_9.2c.zip, unzip the files in a new folder (directory) -- we suggest naming it REIMS.
The folder will initially contain old ASAPROSAR data for playing with the program. Utilities provide for deleting that data to begin use with new data.
REIMS.EXE was written in FoxPro 2.6 for Windows. Although the program responds to mouse clicks, it was designed to operate with the keyboard for most functions. The idea here was that entry of data is keyboard-intensive and should not require a mouse to save or cancel entries.
Contact, follow-up, questions?
Skip Charles can be contacted at hjcharles@post.harvard.edu. He welcomes feedback, comments and suggestions.
