Eye Phone

Thirty-nine million people worldwide are blind, with a large percentage of sufferers living in the world’s poorest countries. As current tools for assessing eye health are expensive, Peek [Portable Eye Examination Kit] was developed. It uses smartphone technology to examine eyes affordably and easily. Looking at the retina is crucial to identify conditions like cataracts and glaucoma. With a 3D-printed device that clips onto a smartphone, healthcare workers can get high-quality views of the retina though the phone’s video camera; the images can be stored and shared with others via SMS or email. Over the last few years, successful trials have been carried out in Kenya, Botswana and Mali. Results show that, using Peek, healthcare workers can assess over 1,000 people each week. A crowd funding campaign is being undertaken to enable Peek to manufacture the device on a larger scale. They aim to distribute the product by October 2015.

Written by Katie Panteli

Katie Panteli

Writer

Katie, a Warwick Biomed graduate, works for a science-publishing house in London with some of the world's most respected scientific minds. She's most interested in human biology, anything and everything that makes us tick.

• Image by Peek Vision
• Originally published under a Creative Commons Licence
• Research published in Eye, March 2012