Leaders from around the world gathered yesterday at the Science Museum for Sightgeist, a major event spotlighting the issue of the 2.5 billion people globally with uncorrected poor vision.
Sightgeist showcased breakthrough tech innovations, philanthropic initiatives and global research programmes – all being applied to address the challenge of untreated poor vision.
Hosted by June Sarpong MBE, Sightgeist convened leading scientists, technologists, campaigners, innovators and thought leaders. Keynote speakers included Professor Brian Cox OBE FRS along with Erna Takazawa, the first fully-qualified optometrist in Samoa and awardee of the Queen’s Young Leader Award, Jonathan Ledgard founder of Redline and Chris Sheldrick founder of What3Words.
Lord Bates, Department for International Development, spoke at the event and announced an extra £9.8million in funding to assistive technologies globally. New statistics also highlighted a dramatic rise of myopia among children around the world, with figures set to increase from an already worrying 300 million to 500 million by 2050.
Seven Hills has supported Clearly since its launch in 2015 and was proud to support Sightgeist.