'Eye-Phone' a low-cost solution to save the sight of people in world's remote areas
People in remote regions like Rift Valley can benefit from cheap smartphone diagnosis to help treat eye illnesses such as glaucoma
Simon Kamau, 26, has been in almost constant pain since he was a playful three-year-old and accidentally pierced his eye with a sharp object, but smartphone technology now offers hope.
His family live in an impoverished part of rural Naivasha in Kenya's Rift Valley region and could not afford the 80-kilometre journey to the nearest specialist hospital, leaving the young Kamau blind in one eye ever since.
Today, 23 years later, Kamau has a chance to better his quality of life thanks to a team of doctors from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine armed with an innovative, low- cost, smartphone solution.
"Kenya was a natural test location," the project's team leader, Dr Andrew Bastawrous, said. "For a country with a population of more than 40 million, there are only 86 qualified eye doctors, 43 of whom are operating in the capital, Nairobi."
The equipment used in the five-year study, which is in its final stages, is a smartphone with a lens that scans the retina, plus an application to record the data.
The technology is deceptively simple and relatively cheap: each "Eye-Phone", as Bastawrous likes to call his invention, costs a few hundred euros, compared to a ophthalmoscope that costs tens of thousands of euros and weighs in at around 130kg.