TED Fellow Andrew Bastawrous studies eye health — and builds accessible new tools to bring eye care to more people.

Why you should listen

Andrew Bastawrous is cofounder and CEO of Peek Vision, a social impact organization that uses smartphone technology to radically increase access to eye care in some of the most challenging places in the world. Bastawrous is also an ophthalmologist (eye surgeon) and Associate Professor in International Eye Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.Peek's vision app, Peek Acuity, is being used to transform eye health in more than 150 countries. The organization ran one of the top-ten all-time Indiegogo crowd-funding campaigns in the health sector -- for Peek Retina, a smartphone ophthalmoscope -- and was voted "best social-impact start-up in Europe" by Google and McKinsey in 2016. All prize money has been re-invested in Peek.Bastawrous is 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. He and his wife Madeleine have established a social enterprise healthy bakery in Kenya that provides employment, with profits paying for eye care.In 2018, Bastawrous was invited to deliver the Commonwealth Address in the presence of the British Royal Family, where he announced the creation of a new one-billion-dollar Vision Catalyst Fund -- a new vision for international aid.

Andrew Bastawrous’ TED talks

More news and ideas from Andrew Bastawrous

In Brief

An ultra-low-cost online MBA launches today … and more news from TED speakers

March 15, 2016

  Shai Reshef’s nonprofit University of the People — which offers nearly tuition-free, accredited degrees online — today launches its first graduate degree, an MBA program in 12 courses. Although there are no tuition or textbook fees, there is a $200 testing fee per course, which means students can expect to pay $2,400 for their MBA (compare this to the average cost […]

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Fellows Friday

Eye phone: How a TED Fellow’s new app could help restore sight to millions

December 19, 2014

Around 39 million people in the world are affected by blindness — 80% of which could be avoided if people had timely access to diagnosis and proper treatment. The problem is that in many developing countries, most eye care providers are in cities, while the majority of patients live in hard-to-reach rural areas. To bridge this gap, London-based opthalmologist Andrew Bastawrous created Peek — an app […]

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