The Galaxy Upcycling program repurposes older smartphones into medical analysis cameras, serving to underserved populations in Vietnam, India, Morocco and Papua New Guinea
Samsung Electronics is repurposing older smartphones to allow higher entry to ophthalmic well being care in underserved communities around the globe. Samsung partnered with the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and Yonsei University Health System (YUHS) in Korea to create medical gadgets1 that display for eye illness by upcycling Galaxy smartphones which can be not of use. This Galaxy Upcycling program helps to deal with roughly 1 billion international instances of imaginative and prescient impairment which can be preventable with correct analysis.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at the least 2.2 billion individuals have a type of imaginative and prescient impairment and nearly half of those instances had been preventable or have but to be addressed. There is a big disparity within the prevalence of imaginative and prescient impairment relying on the affordability and availability of eye care providers. This is estimated to be 4 instances extra widespread in low- and middle-income areas as in comparison with high-income areas2.
“People around the globe face barriers to accessing fundamental health care, and we saw an opportunity to engineer smart, innovative solutions that reuse products to drive more sustainable practices and make a positive impact in our communities,” stated Sung-Koo Kim, VP of Sustainability Management Office, Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics. “This program embodies Samsung’s belief that technology can enrich people’s lives and help us build a more equitable and sustainable future for all.”
EYELIKE fundus digicam shows at Samsung Developer Conference 2019
In 2017, Samsung created the Galaxy Upcycling program to introduce progressive ways in which Galaxy gadgets could make a optimistic affect. Through this system, an older Galaxy smartphone can turn into the mind of the EYELIKE™3 handheld fundus digicam, which connects to a lens attachment for enhanced fundus analysis, whereas the smartphone is used to seize photos. The Galaxy gadget then makes use of a man-made intelligence algorithm to research and diagnose the pictures for ophthalmic illnesses, and connects to an app that precisely captures affected person knowledge and suggests a remedy routine at a fraction of the price of industrial devices. The distinctive and reasonably priced analysis digicam can display sufferers for situations that will result in blindness, together with diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration.
“We were looking for an eye health diagnosis solution that was cost-effective to reach as many people as possible, and when we saw the performance of Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones, we wanted to integrate their upcycling efforts into our research,” stated Dr. Sangchul Yoon of Yonsei University Health System. “The combination of using multiple optical technologies and artificial intelligence, coupled with camera performance of a Galaxy smartphone, created an affordable medical device that was just as capable as a fundus camera used by medical professionals. This not only solved a health issue, but a growing environmental concern as well.”
Since 2018, Samsung has partnered with IAPB and Yonsei University Health System to learn the lives and imaginative and prescient of greater than 19,000 residents in Vietnam with its moveable retinal digicam. In 2019 alone, it equipped 90 moveable ophthalmoscopes to well being professionals working in distant areas of the nation with out entry to walk-in clinics. Now, Samsung has expanded this system to India, Morocco and Papua New Guinea. Samsung can be broadening its capabilities to new screening areas, together with utilizing upcycled Galaxy gadgets to create smartphone-based moveable colposcopes to display for cervical most cancers and enhance ladies’s accessibility to high quality well being care.
Patients endure screening…
