Phone app helps beat blindness

A Portable Eye Examination Kit (Peek) has been developed to help people receive much-needed eye treatment in less-developed countries. Through this technology and app, people on the global scale will have access to eye examinations complete through a smartphone with external clip-on hardware. Smartphones are more accessible than healthcare in some lower-income countries. Thus, this system will help with the lack of treatment and diagnoses of eye diseases in such nations.

Peek was created by a dynamic team of engineers, ophthalmologists, software experts, and business developers. The idea for this project was catalyzed while members of the team were studying in Kenya and in need of a portable means of cutting-edge equipment to medically evaluate people residing in remote locations. Realizing that 80% of all cases of potential blindness are avoidable, the team took action to develop a preventative technology.
Peek provides a state-of-the-art method for eye examination. The app can allow ophthalmologists to get a better look at cataracts through the adapter and software to get retinal imaging through the smartphone’s camera lens.

This technology can also be used by non-experts in the field to provide a basic prognosis of the eyes for screening cataracts and other maladies of vision. Basic vision is tested through a series of shrinking letters that appear on the smartphone’s screen through Peek. The Peek system is rechargeable through a solar charging knapsack. Patients’ data can be geotagged according to their locations. This assists with treatment follow-ups once the diagnosis of a condition is made.

The Peek team stated on its website that “this research is comparing the easy-to-use, affordable Peek system against state-of-the-art hospital equipment, which costs more than $170,000 and requires a team of 15 trained personnel to operate.” This technology will also benefit higher income countries by enabling eye checkups to occur outside of specialized facilities.

A team of Peek-associated researchers will soon travel to Antarctica in hopes of determining the correlation of tremendous cold and darkness on vision. It will be interesting to see how this research impacts Peek technology in the future.

Story via Peek Vision