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Professor Andrew Bastawrous

BSc (Hons) MBChB HFEA MRCOphth PhD

Associate Professor
in International Eye Health

Room
492

LSHTM
Keppel Street
London
WC1E 7HT
United Kingdom

Tel.
+44 (0)20 7958 8242

Professor Andrew Bastawrous is Co-Founder & CEO of Peek Vision, a social impact organization which uses smartphone technology to radically increase access eye care in some of the most challenging places in the world. Andrew is an Ophthalmologist (Eye Surgeon), and Professor in Global Eye Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine where he teaches on public health for eye health and leads a research portfolio.

Andrew has worked and undertaken research in over twenty countries including two years living in Kenya where he was leading a major eye disease study and the development and testing of Peek.  He has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles focusing on international eye health and mobile technology in healthcare and has co-authored four book chapters.

Andrew was made a TED Fellow in 2014 and his TED talk has been viewed over one million times.  Since then, Peek has run one of the top-ten all-time Indiegogo crowd-funding campaigns in the health sector, for Peek Retina, a smartphone ophthalmoscope.

Peek’s vision check app, Peek Acuity, launched on Google Play store in 2016 and is now a certified medical device in use in over 150 countries. Peek's services now incorporate their apps and hardware and are being used to transform eye health in Kenya, Botswana and India with new programmes starting, with partners CBM, in multiple new locations globally.

The work of Andrew and the Peek team has been recognised with generous awards including the Mazda Rebels with a Cause Prize in partnership with TED, the Gifted Citizen 2014 Award, the Index Design Award, and the Rolex Awards for Enterprise). Peek was voted “best social-impact start-up in Europe” by Google and McKinsey in 2016. All prize money has been re-invested in Peek.

Andrew was voted one of the world’s 30 most influential people in public health, one of the world’s “Top 40 Ophthalmologists under the age of 40” by The Ophthalmologist magazine, was selected as a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, and is listed as an “Eye Health Leader” by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. In 2016 he received the Clearly Vision Life Time Achievement Award and was made a Rolex Laureate. In 2018 Andrew was made an Ashoka Fellow and UBS Global Visionary.

In 2018, Andrew was invited to address the Commonwealth Service in the presence of the British Royal Family, Prime Minister, and a global live TV and radio audience. In his address, Andrew highlighted the transformative effects of regaining lost vision, and the importance of international collaboration in ending avoidable blindness and vision loss worldwide. 

As part of Peek’s mission to bring vision and health to everyone, Andrew is working with major banks, eye health organisations and funders to develop innovative financing models for eye health, the subject of his 2018 TED Talk

In addition to his work as CEO of Peek, Andrew is also working with astrophysicists to crowdsource retinal data, with National Geographic explorers to reach isolated communities, and with artists and activists to advocate for eye care globally (Project Light). Together with his wife Madeleine, Andrew they are establishing a social enterprise micro-bakery model in Kenya that provides employment and healthy food opportunities for the mass market. 

Affiliations

Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases
Department of Clinical Research

Teaching

Annual Short Course - Planning a Public Eye Health Programme

www.lshtm.ac.uk/study/short-courses/eye-health

DTM&H

MSc in Publiuc Eye Health

Multiple other

Research

Peek related research: 

https://www.peekvision.org/en_GB/evidence/publications/ 

 

Full list available on PubMed

Research Area
Diagnostics
Health technology assessment
Public health
Global Health
Mobile technologies
Discipline
Epidemiology
Medicine
Opthalmology
Disease and Health Conditions
Eye diseases
Blindness
Country
Botswana
United Kingdom
Guatemala
India
Kenya
Mali
Malawi
Sierra Leone
Tanzania
South Africa
Region
Sub-Saharan Africa (developing only)
World

Selected Publications

Incidence of Visually Impairing Cataracts Among Older Adults in Kenya.
Bastawrous A; Mathenge W; Nkurikiye J; Wing K; Rono H; Gichangi M; Weiss HA; Macleod D; Foster A; Burton M
2019
JAMA network open
Development and Validation of a Smartphone-based Contrast Sensitivity Test.
Habtamu E; Bastawrous A; Bolster NM; Tadesse Z; Callahan EK; Gashaw B; Macleod D; Burton MJ
2019
Translational vision science & technology
Smartphone-based screening for visual impairment in Kenyan school children: a cluster randomised controlled trial.
Rono HK; Bastawrous A; Macleod D; Wanjala E; Di Tanna GL; Weiss HA; Burton MJ
2018
The Lancet Global health
Six-Year Incidence and Progression of Age-Related Macular Degeneration in Kenya: Nakuru Eye Disease Cohort Study.
Bastawrous A; Mathenge W; Peto T; Shah N; Wing K; Rono H; Weiss HA; Macleod D; Foster A; Burton M
2017
JAMA ophthalmology
The incidence of diabetes mellitus and diabetic retinopathy in a population-based cohort study of people age 50 years and over in Nakuru, Kenya.
Bastawrous A; Mathenge W; Wing K; Bastawrous M; Rono H; Weiss HA; Macleod D; Foster A; Peto T; Blows P
2017
BMC endocrine disorders
Clinical Validation of a Smartphone-Based Adapter for Optic Disc Imaging in Kenya.
Bastawrous A; Giardini ME; Bolster NM; Peto T; Shah N; Livingstone IAT; Weiss HA; Hu S; Rono H; Kuper H
2016
JAMA ophthalmology
Six-Year Incidence of Blindness and Visual Impairment in Kenya: The Nakuru Eye Disease Cohort Study.
Bastawrous A; Mathenge W; Wing K; Rono H; Gichangi M; Weiss HA; Macleod D; Foster A; Burton MJ; Kuper H
2016
Investigative ophthalmology & visual science
Development and Validation of a Smartphone-Based Visual Acuity Test (Peek Acuity) for Clinical Practice and Community-Based Fieldwork.
Bastawrous A; Rono HK; Livingstone IAT; Weiss HA; Jordan S; Kuper H; Burton MJ
2015
JAMA ophthalmology
See more Publications