Andrew Bastawrous: Cheap Eye Check up Alternative
Ophthalmologist Andrew Bastawrous left his job with the National Health Service in the United Kingdom and moved to Kenya in 2011. While testing the sight of more than 5,000 people in remote areas, he realized a cheap method was needed in a country where vision problems were rife, eye-care specialists scarce and access to diagnostic services limited. Most of the world’s 285 million visually impaired people live in low-income countries, often in areas where there is little access to diagnosis or treatment. British ophthalmologist Andrew Bastawrous is radically changing eye care in sub-Saharan Africa with a portable examination system based on smartphones.
As Featured in Rolex Awards for Enterprise.
http://www.rolexawards.com/40/laureate/andrew-bastawrous
Andrew Bastawrous is a Kenya-based ophthalmologist who co-founded PEEK, a low-cost smartphone ophthalmic tool. PEEK was built to deliver eye care in some of the world’s most challenging places, to those who need it most. Bastawrous is a research fellow at the International Centre for Eye Health.
Andrew has worked in Sierra Leone, Peru, Belize, Sri Lanka, Madagascar and Uganda and is based in Kenya working on the collaborative development and testing of Peek. In 2011, Andrew was awarded a Medical Research Council (MRC) and Fight for Sight Fellowship to undertake the first longitudinal population-based study (follow-up study) of eye disease in Africa and the challenges he faced inspired the idea of a smartphone-based ophthalmic tool. He has published some 25 peer-reviewed articles focusing on international eye health and mobile technology in healthcare and has co-authored four book chapters. Andrew was awarded the MRC Max Perutz Science writing Award in 2012 and is a TED Fellow.
