Millions of mobiles are set aside in the corners of the houses every year, replaced by better ones, by the novelty of the moment, by those with a larger screen … but that does not mean that they cannot be used for anything.
There are many people who decide to transform them into a webcam, like repeating wifi or as a security camera, but there is another more noble destiny, that of saving lives.
That’s what Samsung is doing with the Galaxy Upcycling program, created in 2017, transforming old mobiles into optical scanners.
They are cameras with a processor capable of making decisions and reaching conclusions, and from Galaxy Upcycling they indicate that they have been working on the creation of eye scanners since 2018 with excellent results. The goal now is to reach areas where it is difficult to have high-end medical supplies.
The scanner in question is called the Samsung Eyelike, and it is capable of obtaining images from the fundus of the eye. An app is responsible for using AI to analyze the image and detect possible complications in real time.
The unique and affordable diagnostic chamber can screen patients for conditions that can lead to blindness, including diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration.
In the article published on news.samsung.com they indicate that they are already helping communities in Vietnam, India, Morocco and Papa New Guinea. In 2019 alone, it supplied 90 portable ophthalmoscopes to healthcare professionals operating in remote regions of the country without access to walk-in clinics, serving more than 19,000 Vietnamese residents with its portable retinal camera.
Samsung is also expanding its capabilities into new areas of detection, including using recycled Galaxy devices to create portable, smartphone-based colposcopes to detect cervical cancer and improve women’s accessibility to quality healthcare.
