{{A team of doctors from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have introduced an innovative, low cost, smartphone that is capable of fixing various eye ailments.}}
The project’s team leader is Dr Andrew Bastawrous, they are currently in Kenya where they are expected to handle 5000 cases.
The equipment used in the study, which has been running for five years and is now in its final stages, is a smartphone with an add-on lens that scans the retina, plus an application to record the data.
The technology is deceptively simple to use and relatively cheap: each ‘Eye-Phone’, as Bastawrous likes to call his invention, costs a few hundred euros (dollars), compared to a professional ophthalmoscope that costs tens of thousands of euros and weighs in at around 130 kilogrammes (290 pounds).
Bastawrous said he hopes the ‘Nakuru Eye Disease Cohort Study’, which has done the rounds of 5,000 Kenyan patients, will one day revolutionise access to eye treatment for millions of low-income Africans who are suffering from eye disease and blindness.
With 80 per cent of the cases of blindness considered curable or preventable, the potential impact is huge.
Data from each patient is uploaded to a team of specialists, who can come up with a diagnosis and advise on follow-up treatment. The results are also compared to tests taken with professional equipment to check the smartphone is a viable alternative.
{{Eye phone}}
Bastawrous says his ‘Eye-Phone’ has proved its worth, and can easily and accurately diagnose ailments including glaucoma, cataracts, myopia and long-sightedness.
Treatments range from prescription glasses and eye drops to complex surgery that is conducted once every two weeks at a hospital in Nakuru, the nearest big town. So far, up to 200 of the 5,000 people involved in the study have had surgery to correct various eye ailments.
NMG
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