Expanding access to care, one idea at a time
Healthcare innovation often begins with a simple question: How can we reach the people who need care the most?
In the winter of 2013, a young Sydney optometrist Shaun Chang was trekking in Nepal's Sagarmatha (Everest) National Park when his guide took him to visit a local hospital.
What he found shocked him; the extent of the Everest National Park communities' optometry services was a collection of broken frames and a lens kit dating back to the 1960s. Shaun decided to put his training as a UNSW optometrist to work and spent hours teaching the local hospital staff what he could. But he felt like it wasn't enough. Upon his return to Australia he established Eyes4Everest.
The impact grew quickly. During their first official trip, the team of four, including Shaun, his pharmacist brother, and two other optometrists expected to see around 80 patients. Instead, they screened 152 people. Including children who had walked over three hours from other villages to gain the support for their eye sight.
Since that first trip in 2014, Eyes4Everest has examined nearly 1,500 patients across Nepal's Everest and Annapurna regions. The have opened a permanent eye clinic at Khunde Hospital, exactly ten years after Shaun's first visit to the site. The clinic now sits alongside a general ward, laboratory, and dental clinic, and is staffed by a locally trained ophthalmic assistants who continues the work year-round.
Shaun Chang &
Dr Kamitemba at the Sherpa Hospital built by his childhood hero, Sir Edmund Hillary.
Eyes4Everest is a reminder that some of the greatest impact can begin by one person deciding to act.
The Peter Farrell Cup exists for that exact moment.
The Peter Farrell Cup is UNSW's flagship student startup competition, open to students from all faculties, including Medicine & Health. to participate you don't need a polished solution or a commercial roadmap, all you need a problem worth caring about and the drive to explore it seriously.
For students already thinking about how care, research or technology could reach more people, more effectively, that starting point is already there.
Shaun found his in a remote hospital at 3,800 metres. Yours might be closer than you think.
If you're have an idea how there could bead better way, the Peter Farrell Cup is your chance to explore that idea.