Health News – Smartphone eye examinations using Peek offer new hope for tackling blindness

Community health worker using Peek to test a patient’s eyesight outside their home in KenyaThe team behind Peek, the Portable Eye Examination Kit, are calling on the public to help provide a solution to avoidable blindness by increasing access to potentially life-changing new eye health testing equipment.

Peek consists of smartphone apps and an adapter which can be used by health workers anywhere in the world to test eyes easily and affordably in the community. This is especially important as millions of people around the world are not able to get to clinics or hospitals to seek help.

The tools are being developed as a collaboration between the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the University of Strathclyde and the NHS Glasgow Centre for Ophthalmic Research, pooling their complementary expertise in international eye health, biomedical engineering and ophthalmic research.

Their latest creation is called Peek Retina, a smartphone adapter engineered at the University of Strathclyde and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde which clips over the phone’s camera and enables health workers to see inside the eye, save the photos and then send them to experts for diagnosis and subsequent treatment. Many eye diseases and other health problems, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, can be detected with a good view of the retina.

Peek Retina’s unique features – which will complement Peek’s freely available intuitive apps and software – are grounded in scientific expertise, producing high-quality images which compare favourably with traditional ophthalmoscopes and far more expensive, bulky retinal cameras.

Crowdfunding site Indiegogo is now offering a way of raising additional funding to enable manufacture and delivery of Peek tools on a global scale to the people who need it most. Peek aims to develop mobile-based versions of everything needed for a comprehensive eye exam, empowering health workers to find people with eye problems which could be cured or prevented with treatment.

People can go to www.supportpeek.com and buy Peek Retina for their own use, or pledge funds to enable the adapter to be manufactured and distributed to suitable low-income settings.

 

Curated from Health News – Smartphone eye examinations using Peek offer new hope for tackling blindness