App replaces doctors’ equipment, enables eye tests anywhere

The Peek Vision app enables roving doctors to give patients a full eye exam using their smartphones.

Consumers have replaced a number of devices — mp3 players, digital cameras, handheld games consoles — with their smartphones, so it seems possible that the handsets could even replace expensive medical equipment. The Peek Vision app just might be proving that point, enabling roving doctors to give patients a full eye exam using their smartphones.

Developed by members of the International Centre for Eye Health — a research group based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine — the app leverages the existing functionalities of today’s smartphones to allow doctors in rural or low-income areas to deliver eye care to citizens in a mobile and inexpensive way. Doctors and optometrists using Peek Vision will be able to check patients’ abilities to see color, test for long and short-sightedness, and also detect the presence of cataracts and other eye conditions. The app uses smartphones’ cameras, flashlights and display to check how the eyes react to stimuli, while doctors can also track the progress of separate patients and also easily keep a record of their geolocation.

The team are currently carrying out research to ensure the app is accurate enough for medical purposes, although a release date and price hasn’t yet been announced. Are there other ways smartphone features could replace professional equipment with a cheap portable alternative?

Spotted by Murray Orange, written by Springwise