In recognition of World Health Day, Samsung Newsroom is looking back at the first year of the program’s implementation, which has upcycled hundreds of secondhand Galaxy devices and provided basic eye care for over 3,000 patients in Morocco, India and Papua New Guinea.

Upcycling Galaxy Technology Into Diagnosis Cameras

Globally, 1.1 billion people suffer from vision loss — 90% of which live in low- and middle-income countries and lack access to affordable and quality eye health care. To address this, Samsung has partnered with the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and Yonsei University Health System (YUHS) to transform old and unused Galaxy technology into medical diagnosis cameras called EYELIKE fundus cameras, which allow both medical and non-medical professionals to screen patients for conditions that may lead to blindness.

“We are proud of our team at Samsung who helped infuse upcycled technology to diagnose visual impairment in patients through the EYELIKE platform,” said Dr. Aloknath De, Executive Consulting Director, Open Innovation of Samsung R&D Institute in Bangalore.

Establishing Accessible Eye Care Services in Morocco

Since the introduction of EYELIKE in Morocco, Samsung has partnered with Global Care and 21 other organizations — including public health centers and private clinics — to repurpose 60 units of older smartphones into the EYELIKE Fundus Camera.

“In Morocco, we lack medical personnel and ophthalmic medical equipment, so I’m optimistic EYELIKE will bring huge benefits — especially to patients who live in remote regions,” said optician Mohcine Ait Hida.

Local optometrists have been using the camera to screen over 2,028 patients and provide post-diagnosis care, including prescribing glasses for 128 people, scheduling follow-up appointments with 205 people and connecting 50 people to eye hospitals for additional medical treatment.

Conducting Patient Outreach Programs in India

Recognizing that blindness is a prevailing problem in India, Samsung has upcycled nearly 200 units of secondhand smartphones and provided them to local hospitals. This innovative approach has proved to be a breakthrough for patients like Jamuna Prasad who has been repeatedly prescribed glasses for his declining eyesight for over a year. After his eyes were checked with the EYELIKE Fundus Camera at the Primary Eye Care Center at Sitapur Eye Hospital, he finally received a correct diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy. According to his optometrists, Jamuna’s eyesight has been improving ever since.

At the same time, many patients living in remote communities don’t always have the same access that Jamuna Prasad had to a vision center. Thanks to the portable nature of the cameras, optometrists can travel to remote villages through outreach programs and screen people for potential eye diseases. As a result of the EYELIKE Fundus Camera, over 1,000 patients in India have received screenings through both local medical institutions and outreach programs.

Training Medical Staff in Papua New Guinea

In Papua New Guinea, health care facilities often struggle to find trained eye doctors and vital equipment necessary for treating retinal diseases. This situation is only being exacerbated by the prevalence of blindness across the country. For a population of over 9 million, there are only 14 trained ophthalmologists and three fundus cameras nationwide.

“Thanks to the partnership program and the EYELIKE fundus cameras, we now have enough cameras to expand care and screening services on a national scale,” said Dr. Jambi Garap, President of the National Prevention of Blindness Committee and the Lecturer in Ophthalmology at University of Papua New Guinea. “We’re currently training doctors in hopes that they can help diagnose patients nationally and improve people’s understanding of the illnesses they have.”

The EYELIKE program is helping to fill the health equity gap by training doctors and other clinic staff, even in rural communities, to screen patients using the device. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions causing a delay in patient screenings, Dr. Garap looks forward to resuming these screenings this year. She hopes to dispatch additional trainers to rural communities to provide staff with further training, in addition to conducting research on rare eye disorders such as Eales disease with the EYELIKE devices.

Advancing Samsung’s Sustainability Vision

As part of its mission to harness technology for good by positively impacting both people and the planet, Samsung plans to elevate this partnership through continuous technical support and open collaboration to allow for the continued nationwide training and screening of patients.

Samsung is dedicated to delivering innovative technologies that help build a better future and empower users to adopt more sustainable practices. This also includes taking tangible actions to reduce our environmental impact and reshape consumer experiences through our sustainability platform, Galaxy for the Planet. EYELIKE specifically helps Samsung minimize its environmental impact by supporting its goal to achieve zero waste to landfills and reduce e-waste by 2025.

About International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness

International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) is the overarching alliance for the global eye health sector, with more than 150 organizations in over 100 countries working together for a world where everyone has universal access to eye care. IAPB focuses on advocacy efforts to unite the sector behind the recommendations of the World Report on Vision and the Sustainable Development Goals.

About Yonsei University Health System

Yonsei University Health System (YUHS) is the first modern medical institution in South Korea, and it has been a leading medical institution in the country for more than 130 years. Severance Hospital and Yonsei University College of Medicine are part of the Yonsei University Health System.

The importance of pursuing environmentally friendly activities for a company on the scale of Samsung Electronics cannot be underestimated in terms of the potential for leading the way in mitigating such global issues as climate change and resource depletion. For this reason, environment-related activities and initiatives lie at the heart of Samsung’s sustainable business practices.

Taking A Green Approach Since the 1990s

Since its Environment Declaration in 1992, Samsung Electronics has been managing its ‘green’ business in order to fulfill its environmental responsibilities understanding that any expense put towards fighting environmental issues is not an optional, but instead a necessary, corporate investment.

In 1998, the company established its own E-Waste Take-Back and Recycling Centers to promote the efficient use of waste products, pioneering this program in the domestic electronics industry. In 2004, the company advanced its development of environmentally friendly products by introducing the Eco-Design Process, an appraisal that assesses the energy efficiency, resource efficiency and environmental damage of a potential product right from the beginning of the product development cycle. In 2005, Samsung’s Environment Analysis Lab was established to put in place a system that keeps track of whether hazardous substances are included or not in a product’s development process, from specific parts and components through to completed products.

As a result of these initiatives, in 2009 Samsung was able to introduce Green Memory, a high-speed, low-power and highly reliable semiconductor solution. If all global servers were to implement the 5G Green Memory Solution as of 2014, 45 TWh of electricity would be saved overall annually, and the environmental effect would be equivalent to planting an additional 800 million 10-year-old trees. Samsung’s Quantum Dot TV, launched in 2016, was the first TV product to not use cadmium, a material found to be harmful to both the human body as well as the environment. Such competitive edges were maintained in the launch of the QLED TV in 2017 and QLED 8K in 2018, making Samsung a market leader in terms of industry innovation as well as sustainability.

Furthermore, Samsung’s Galaxy Upcycling program provides an alternative method for resource circulation by repurposing used smartphones as IoT devices with new functions. Efforts such as this that the company continues to propagate has led to global recognition, with the company winning the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘Champion Award: Cutting Edge’ in 2017 for its game-changing work in electronics sustainability.

Samsung’s Practices on Sustainable Products and Business Operations

Since 2005’s Kyoto Protocol, brought about to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, Samsung has been accelerating its environmentally friendly endeavors in order to help reduce emissions. In 2009, Samsung announced its green business vision and intermediate goals in order to lead global response to this environmental regulation with a focus on low carbon emissions and ‘green’ growth.

From 2009 to 2018, the use of high-efficiency products saw the company reduce its accumulated greenhouse gas emissions by 243.1 million tons. This is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions of 1.5 billion people’s refrigerator usage over the span of an entire year.¹ By establishing a circular resource economy system, as of last year 54 countries participated in taking back end-of-life products from Samsung customers. About 3.55 million tons of e-waste was collected cumulatively from the take-back program between 2009 and 2018. In addition, an accumulated amount of 220,000 tons of recycled plastic went back into Samsung products in the same time period.

With 216 business bases in 74 countries, Samsung not only works on managing the environmental impact of its products, but also on developing environmentally friendly business establishments. In June 2018, Samsung announced its goal to use 100% renewable energy across all its establishments in the US, Europe and China by 2020, as well as to install 63,000 m² of solar and geothermal power facilities in Korea. In October 2018, Samsung’s U.S. headquarters, as well as all US Device Solution manufacturing plants converted to using energy from 100% renewable sources, and the company’s Slovakian worksites have since followed suit.

Samsung Electronics’ green business achievements over the last 10 years are summarized in the infographic below.

Samsung Electronics published its 2019 Sustainability Report on June 28. The entire report can be downloaded here.

¹ This figure is calculated from the global sales and greenhouse gas emission per product based on the average power consumption of domestic refrigerator models sold by Samsung Electronics in 2018