2017 / Design For Society / Design for Society / Professional

PEEK RETINA - Mobile Phone Ophthalmoscope

• Company
  Wideblue Ltd, United Kingdom
• Lead Designer
  Russell Overend
• Design Team
  Colin Phimister, Eileen Faulds, Craig Whitehill, Frances McQuade, Ken Devlin
• Client
  Peek Vision
• Project Link
  view
• Other credit
  Thanks To University Of Strathclyde For Early Work On The Concept.

Peek Vision are an international charity
with the mission of eliminating preventable
blindness in the world. Peek Vision had the
idea for a precision optical clip-on to turn
any smart phone with a camera into a low
cost, high quality ophthalmoscope. Their
approach is to supply these low cost, easy
to use devices to both developed and
developing countries to allow more frequent
screening of eye diseases. The images or
videos captured by the phone camera can be
stored and shown to the patient as part of
the consultation.
Peek Vision chose Wideblue Ltd to develop
the concept and take the product to
manufacturing. Wideblue designers developed
the optical system, the electronics and
software operation, and the mechanical
designs for easy and secure attachment to
any size and type of mobile phone camera.
Wideblue worked on the product aesthetics
and human factors to develop a product that
is functional, intuitive, low cost and easy
to use. Wideblue prepared a batch of
prototypes for evaluation by various
experts. The prototypes have been trialled
in UK, USA, Tanzania and Netherlands and
found to work perfectly. Wideblue then fully
designed the product for production using
standard low cost manufacturing techniques.
The key challenges overcome were to design
the product to fit EVERY POSSIBLE mobile
phone, design
the product to eliminate unwanted
reflections from the cornea, allow various
brightness's to be selected, design the
product to be as small, easy to use and
unobtrusive as possible. Wideblue together
with Peek Vision also designed the
innovative product packaging. The packaging
includes a unique training "eye" allowing
clinical users to practice eye examinations
on a
selection of simulated eye conditions. The
training "eye" is supplied with high
resolution retina images to educate the user
in glaucoma, diabetes, macula degeneration,
retinopathy and swollen optic nerve.

Bio
Wideblue are a full service technical new product design consultancy. Wideblue were formed in 2006 as a management buy out from Polaroids'European Design Centre. Wideblue's team of Industrial Designers, Mechanical Engineers, Physicists, Electronics and Software engineers have created some of the most innovative new technology products over the past 13 years. Wideblue's strengths are in the creation of simple, easy to understand products combined with an inner complexity and the technical performance to meet the customers needs.

Other prizes
European Product Design Award - Best Design for Humanity 2017 - Peek Retina - Mobile Phone based Ophthlamoscope.