Peek Vision Research

Peek Vision is a social enterprise that provides technological solutions for eyecare services in low and middle-income countries. It started as a PhD project at ICEH before becoming a separate entity in 2015.

Peek and ICEH continue to work closely together, with joint research projects and staff members with dual roles.

All of Peek’s products are validated through research and Peek-powered programmes and partners generate high-quality evidence for the eye health field.

Validation studies

Peek Acuity launched in 2016 as the world’s first clinically-validated visual acuity test smartphone app. It is still available for free and has been downloaded and used by over 50,000 people in 160 countries. The app then became part of a wide-ranging health systems software, where programme providers can now follow the patient journey from screening to treatment and identify where patients are being left behind.

Several studies in key journals have validated Peek’s products:

• Research published in 2015 showed that Peek Acuity is at least as accurate as conventional distance-vision checks when used by non-specialist community health workers in Kenya, and is also slightly quicker than a conventional test
• In an external systematic review of 14 mobile visual acuity tests in 2020, the Peek Acuity app was determined to have the best reproducibility and correlation with standard testing methods
• A 2021 randomised controlled trial in Kenya compared a community eye health programme powered by Peek to a conventional programme. The study showed that with Peek, almost three times the number of people with eye problems were connected to care compared to conventional programmes
• In the same 2021 study, the proportion of people attending hospitals for eye problems that could have been treated at the primary care level reduced from 61% to 17%
• Peek recently validated a near vision acuity test, which showed results comparable to those of an existing accepted test

Publications

• Marzieh Katibeh, Sandip Das Sanyam, Elanor Watts, Nigel M. Bolster, Reena Yadav, Abhishek Roshan, Sailesh K. Mishra, Matthew J. Burton, Andrew Bastawrous; Development and Validation of a Digital (Peek) Near Visual Acuity Test for Clinical Practice, Community-Based Survey, and Research. Trans. Vis. Sci. Tech. 2022;11(12):18. https://doi.org/10.1167/tvst.11.12.18
• Effectiveness of an mHealth system on access to eye health services in Kenya: a cluster-randomised controlled trial. The Lancet Digital Health. July 2021. Volume 3, Issue 7, e414 – e424. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2589-7500(21)00083-2
• Rono H, Bastawrous A, Macleod D et al. Smartphone-based screening for visual impairment in Kenyan school children: a cluster randomised controlled trial. Lancet Global Health. July 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(18)30244-4
• Bastawrous A, Rono HK, Livingstone IAT, et al. Development and Validation of a Smartphone-Based Visual Acuity Test (Peek Acuity) for Clinical Practice and Community-Based Fieldwork. JAMA Ophthalmol. 2015;133(8):930–937. https://doi.org.uk/10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2015.1468

Improving Access Through Rapid Intervention Testing

Peek is also running adaptive trials in Kenya, Botswana and India inspired by methods routinely used in software development. This will identify those left behind from services and rapidly test interventions to improve access.

Find out more about this project here.