A smartphone retinal adapter developed with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and University of Strathclyde staff has won a prestigious international award.
Peek, a portable eye examination kit, won the INDEX: Award 2015 design prize with a cheque for €100,000 to further develop the kit.
The affordable smartphone adapter, which could eliminate 80 percent of the world’s blindness, is enabling professional eye examinations to be undertaken anywhere in the world.
The INDEX: Awards recognises designs from across the world that offer vast improvements to people’s lives. This year the awards panel received 1,123 nominations from 72 countries. The award is split into five categories: Body, Home, Work, Play & Learning and Community.
The Award jury selected Peek as winners of the Body category because the portable, user-friendly, low-cost design solution is one significant step towards achieving the 66th World Health Assembly Action Plan, which aims to achieve a global reduction of avoidable visual impairments of 25 percent by 2019.
The Peek Retina adapter is being developed through a collaboration between the University of Strathclyde, where Dr Mario Giardini heads the engineering design, Dr Iain Livingstone at the Glasgow Centre for Ophthalmic Research of NHS Greater Glasgow, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Dr Livingstone said: “Winning the INDEX award is a fantastic achievement for the team involved in designing what potentially could change the lives of people across the world.
“I am personally delighted to have been involved in the project and the additional funding from this award provides us with the opportunity to further develop the adaptor offering it to health workers the world over.”
Dr Giardini added: “Peek Retina will make a massive impact in low-income countries and demonstrates the impact quality research can have in tackling the global problems faced in society today.”
Kigge Hvid, CEO of the INDEX: Design to Improve Life® organisation, who founded the prize ten years ago, said: “The jury found five winners who all brilliantly illustrate how design can be a decisive factor when addressing the world’s most pressing challenges like pollution, health issues, climate change, over population, poverty, food waste, and many more equally important.
“Peek Retina is a perfect example of this and promotes exactly the purpose of INDEX: Award.”
Read more about Peek at www.peekvision.org and about the INDEX: Award 2015 and the INDEX: Design to Improve Life® organisation at www.designtoimprovelife.dk.
ENDS