Andrew Bastawrous demonstrates his amazing eye scanning application in this TED Talk.
Andrew Bastawrous has a staggering statistic – there are 39million people in the world who are blind. Further, eighty percent of these people do not need to be blind. Their eye problems are curable, and in the future will be preventable. Bastawrous’ TED Talk, Get your next eye exam on a smartphone, showcases the work he’s done with eye scanners and personal eye health.
A decade ago Andrew moved his young family to Kenya and set up one hundred clinics to figure out why so many people were going blind, and what could be done about the problem. He began to rethink the process of clinics and high tech equipment when one thought occurred – the patients who are most in need of eye care are the least likely to get that care.
http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_bastawrous_get_your_next_eye_exam_on_a_smartphone#t-254416
Another startling fact from this talk that deserves a full set of articles in itself is that more people in Kenya have access to smartphones than have access to running water. This led Bastawrous to develop an app to give eye exams. Peek, portable eye examination kit, is designed to give examinations to any person in any language at any age.
This talk is full of examples and demonstrations of the software, communicated so that anyone or any user can understand. The retina scan is the most important diagnostic tool for determining why someone has eye issues. The add-on component that does the retina scan sits in a 3d printed shell and costs about five dollars to manufacture.
The entire Peek scanner can be built for around $500 and is comparable to large scale equipment that costs $25,000. Andrew explains that when first moving to Kenya his team consisted of fifteen people with $150,000 worth of equipment. Now with Peek the same work can be done with a $500 clip-on scanner added to a smartphone and one person with a bike.
http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_bastawrous_get_your_next_eye_exam_on_a_smartphone#t-254416
