Arclight Project showcased at London’s Science Museum
The School of Medicine’s Arclight Project – a social enterprise selling pioneering ophthalmic devices – was showcased at the Science Museum’s ‘Journey of Life’ Lates event in London on Wednesday, 11 September. Science Museum Lates are themed events offering adult audiences an opportunity to explore the museum after hours and learn about the history and future of scientific advances in a particular field.
Over 2,000 members of the public attended the ‘Journey of Life’ event to explore the enormous recent global progress in understanding and improving human health. Speakers also examined how we might tackle the next big challenges in this area. The event highlighted cutting-edge scientific research and technological innovations to improve health – such as the Arclight and the work its project team is doing in partnership with Eye Health Africa, based at London’s Moorfields Eye Hospital.
Arclight was represented by Dr Gatera Fiston Kitema, who recently completed his PhD at the School of Medicine. Dr Kitema, whose PhD project evaluated the impact of the Arclight training package on eye-health service delivery in Rwanda, now works at Moorfields. He showed visitors how to use the Arclight ophthalmoscope and how images it captures can be shown on a mobile phone and in telemedicine. “It was amazing to see the level of enthusiasm and engagement the public had,” said Dr Kitema.
The Arclight is a novel ophthalmoscope-otoscope designed and evaluated by researchers from the School of Medicine. The device is small and compact, unlike traditional ophthalmoscopes, meaning it is truly portable without loss of functionality. Solar panels and LED lights in sleek designs create robust instruments that are ideal for use anywhere, particularly in low-resource settings. As such, the Arclight is recommended for use in eye and ear screening by the World Health Organization.
Over 40,000 Arclight devices have been distributed worldwide. The project team is working to increase this further, as well as researching and developing additional ophthalmic diagnostic devices – using the same ‘less is more’ design principles – to improve access to eye care where it is needed most.