Co-creating socially-inclusive eyecare model to overcome world preventable blindness and visual impairment

NAKAYAMA Shintaro, BA | OUI Inc.;  SHIMIZU Eisuke, MD, PhD
Competition Sponsor: Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development
Awardee Year: 2025

Blindness and visual impairment greatly reduce people’s quality of life and cause significant economic losses as well as medical losses. In the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in Goal 3 of the SDGs set by the United Nations, WHO has positioned the prevention of blindness as one of the core issues to be addressed in achieving UHC.

Currently, there are 43 million people blind and 2.2 billion visually impaired, half of whom are blind or visually impaired due to preventable diseases. The majority of them are living in the marginalized areas where access to eyecare is difficult.

This is not only the case in developing countries where the absolute number of ophthalmologists is small, but also in the countries like Japan, where access to eye care remains not easy in remote islands and rural areas, and even in urban areas, there are many bedridden elderly patients with ophthalmologic diseases who have not been accessible to ophthalmologists. Poor visual function not only greatly reduces the quality of life of the elderly, but can also be a factor in the progression of dementia.

Our invention, Smart Eye Camera (SEC) can make a difference to the situation.

Through SEC, ophthalmic images taken with a smartphone can be shared with remote locations via an installed app, enabling remote medical care that connects ophthalmologists with underpopulated areas. Together with artificial intelligence of eye diseases developable through continuous usage of SEC, we will create innovative and socially-inclusive eyecare models to overcome preventable world blindness and visual impairment.