TED2014
Andrew Bastawrous: Get your next eye exam on a smartphone
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Thirty-nine million people in the world are blind, and the majority lost their sight due to curable and preventable diseases. But how do you test and treat people who live in remote areas, where expensive, bulky eye equipment is hard to come by? TED Fellow Andrew Bastawrous demos a smartphone app and cheap hardware that might help.
Andrew Bastawrous - Eye surgeon, inventor
Andrew Bastawrous studies eye health -- and builds accessible new tools to bring eye care to more people. Full bio
Andrew Bastawrous studies eye health -- and builds accessible new tools to bring eye care to more people. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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There are 39 million people in the world
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who are blind.
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Eighty percent of them
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are living in low-income countries such as Kenya,
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and the absolute majority
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do not need to be blind.
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They are blind from diseases
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that are either completely curable or preventable.
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Knowing this, with my young family,
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we moved to Kenya.
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We secured equipment,
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funds, vehicles, we trained a team,
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we set up a hundred clinics throughout
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the Great Rift Valley
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to try and understand a single question:
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why are people going blind,
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and what can we do?
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The challenges were great.
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When we got to where we were going,
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we set up our high-tech equipment.
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Power was rarely available.
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We'd have to run our equipment
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from petrol power generators.
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And then something occurred to me:
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There has to be an easier way,
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because it's the patients who are the most in need
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of access to eye care
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who are the least likely to get it.
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More people in Kenya,
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and in sub-Saharan Africa,
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have access to a mobile phone
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than they do clean running water.
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So we said, could we harness
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the power of mobile technology
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to deliver eye care in a new way?
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And so we developed Peek,
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a smartphone [system] that enables
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community healthcare workers
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and empowers them to deliver eye care everywhere.
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We set about replacing
traditional hospital equipment,
traditional hospital equipment,
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which is bulky, expensive and fragile,
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with smartphone apps and hardware
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that make it possible to test anyone
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in any language and of any age.
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Here we have a demonstration
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of a three-month-old having their vision
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accurately tested using an app and an eye tracker.
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We've got many trials going on
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in the community and in schools,
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and through the lessons that
we've learned in the field,
we've learned in the field,
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we've realized it's extremely important
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to share the data in non-medical jargon
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so that people understand
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what we're examining and what that means to them.
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So here, for example,
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we use our sight sim application,
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once your vision has been measured,
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to show carers and teachers
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what the visual world is like for that person,
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so they can empathize with them and help them.
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Once we've discovered somebody has low vision,
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the next big challenge is to work out why,
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and to be able to do that,
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we need to have access to the inside of the eye.
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Traditionally, this requires expensive equipment
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to examine an area called the retina.
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The retina is the single part of the eye that has
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huge amounts of information about the body
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and its health.
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We've developed 3D-printed,
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low-cost hardware
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that comes in at less than five dollars to produce,
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which can then be clipped onto a smartphone
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and makes it possible to get views
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of the back of the eye
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of a very high quality.
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And the beauty is, anybody can do it.
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In our trials on over two and half thousand people,
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the smartphone with the add-on clip
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is comparable to a camera
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that is hugely more expensive
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and hugely more difficult to transport.
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When we first moved to Kenya,
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we went with 150,000 dollars of equipment,
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a team of 15 people,
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and that was what was
needed to deliver health care.
needed to deliver health care.
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Now, all that's needed
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is a single person
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on a bike with a smartphone.
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And it costs just 500 dollars.
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The issue of power supply
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is overcome by harnessing the power of solar.
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Our healthcare workers travel
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with a solar-powered rucksack
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which keeps the phone charged and backed up.
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Now we go to the patient
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rather than waiting for the patient never to come.
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We go to them in their homes
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and we give them the most comprehensive,
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high-tech, accurate examination,
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which can be delivered by
anyone with minimal training.
anyone with minimal training.
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We can link global experts
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with people in the most rural,
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difficult-to-reach places
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that are beyond the end of the road,
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effectively putting those experts in their homes,
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allowing us to make diagnoses
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and make plans for treatment.
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Project managers, hospital directors,
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are able to search on our interface
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by any parameter they may be interested in.
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Here in Nakuru, where I've been living,
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we can search for people
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by whatever condition.
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Here are people who are blind
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from a curable condition cataract.
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Each red pin depicts somebody
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who is blind from a disease that is curable
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and treatable, and they're locatable.
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We can use bulk text messaging services
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to explain that we're coming to arrange a treatment.
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What's more, we've learned that this is something
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that we haven't built just for the community
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but with the community.
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Those blue pins that drop represent
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elders, or local leaders,
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that are connected to those people
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who can ensure that we can find them
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and arrange treatment.
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So for patients like Mama Wangari,
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who have been blind for over 10 years
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and never seen her grandchildren,
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for less than 40 dollars, we can restore her eyesight.
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This is something that has to happen.
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It's only in statistics
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that people go blind by the millions.
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The reality is everyone goes blind on their own.
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But now, they might just be
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a text message away from help.
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(Applause)
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And now because live demos are always a bad idea,
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we're going to try a live demo.
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(Laughter)
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So here we have the Peek Vision app.
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Okay, and what we're looking at here,
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this is Sam's optic nerve,
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which is a direct extension of her brain,
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so I'm actually looking at her brain as we look there.
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We can see all parts of the retina.
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It makes it possible to pick up diseases
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of the eye and of the body
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that would not be possible without access to the eye,
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and that clip-on device can be manufactured
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for just a few dollars,
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and people can be cured of blindness,
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and I think it says a lot about us as a human race
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if we've developed cures and we don't deliver them.
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But now we can.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Andrew Bastawrous - Eye surgeon, inventorAndrew Bastawrous studies eye health -- and builds accessible new tools to bring eye care to more people.
Why you should listen
Andrew Bastawrous is cofounder and CEO of Peek Vision, a social impact organization that uses smartphone technology to radically increase access to eye care in some of the most challenging places in the world. Bastawrous is also an ophthalmologist (eye surgeon) and Associate Professor in International Eye Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Peek's vision app, Peek Acuity, is being used to transform eye health in more than 150 countries. The organization ran one of the top-ten all-time Indiegogo crowd-funding campaigns in the health sector -- for Peek Retina, a smartphone ophthalmoscope -- and was voted "best social-impact start-up in Europe" by Google and McKinsey in 2016. All prize money has been re-invested in Peek.
Bastawrous is working with astrophysicists to crowdsource retinal data; with National Geographic explorers to reach isolated communities; and with artists and activists to advocate for eye care globally. He and his wife Madeleine have established a social enterprise healthy bakery in Kenya that provides employment, with profits paying for eye care.
In 2018, Bastawrous was invited to deliver the Commonwealth Address in the presence of the British Royal Family, where he announced the creation of a new one-billion-dollar Vision Catalyst Fund -- a new vision for international aid.
Andrew Bastawrous | Speaker | TED.com