The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2019–2026
OUI turns a smartphone into a pocket slit-lamp microscope — ADC 105 Best of Discipline
A Keio eye-doctor startup turns an iPhone into a pocket slit-lamp microscope for remote eye exams — ADC 105 Best of Discipline.
OUI Inc.
What it had to solve
OUI Inc., founded by ophthalmologists from Keio University School of Medicine, set out to make eye exams possible where slit-lamp microscopes and specialists do not exist — the founder saw the gap during medical support work in Vietnam. TBWA\Hakuhodo joined as creative partner to scale the device worldwide.
How it works
Ophthalmologists from Keio University School of Medicine founded OUI Inc. after seeing, during medical support work in Vietnam, how people go blind from conditions that are preventable and curable simply because there is no eye-care equipment or specialist nearby. Their answer was not a cheaper slit-lamp microscope, but a different object entirely: the smartphone.
The Smart Eye Camera (SEC) is a lightweight attachment that uses the phone's own camera and flashlight, plus its own lens and light source, to examine the front of the eye with diagnostic performance equivalent to a slit-lamp microscope. It is approved as a medical device in Japan, works for telemedicine, and its AI can detect and grade cataracts without a specialist physically present.
TBWA\Hakuhodo joined as creative partner to scale the device, framing the company's mission as cutting world blindness by 50%. In 2026 the work won the ADC 105th Annual Awards' Best of Discipline in Product Design plus two Gold Cubes, after earlier wins at Spikes Asia, ADFEST and Clio.
The device targets the 43 million blind people worldwide — a number projected to reach 120 million by 2050 — more than half of whom lost sight from preventable and curable causes. OUI distributes it through partnerships with ophthalmologists, primary-care workers and volunteers, treating the phone as the last-mile diagnostic infrastructure.
Why it lands
- It removes the biggest barrier — access — by turning a device already in billions of hands into the diagnostic instrument, rather than building expensive infrastructure.
- It changes who can deliver eye care: with telemedicine and AI grading, non-specialists and volunteers can collect clinical-grade data where no ophthalmologist exists.
- The mission is concrete and measurable — cut global blindness by 50% — which turned a medical device into a creative challenge the whole agency could build on.
- The design won on craft as well as purpose, taking Product Design's top honor at ADC's 105th Annual, the world's longest-running design competition.
What it did
The device won ADC 105th Annual Best of Discipline in Product Design plus two Gold Cubes in 2026, following wins at Spikes Asia, ADFEST and Clio. OUI's stated goal is to cut global blindness by 50% by delivering diagnoses to people who previously had no access to eye care.
What you can take
Put the instrument inside a device billions already own. When the bottleneck is access, not technology, the creative move is shrinking the tool down to the object already in everyone's pocket.
Since then
By 2026 the Smart Eye Camera was approved as a medical device in Japan, in use for remote diagnosis, and had earned a string of creative awards — ADC 105th Annual Best of Discipline in Product Design with two Gold Cubes, plus honors at Spikes Asia, ADFEST and Clio. OUI Inc. continues to develop AI diagnostics for cataract detection and grading, holds patents across Japan, the US, EU, China, India, Vietnam and Africa, and frames its end goal as reducing world blindness by 50% by giving people access to eye care they previously could not reach.
Sources
- TBWA\HAKUHODO Sweeps the Awards with 7 Wins at the 105th ADC Annual Awards
- TBWA HAKUHODO Wins 7 Awards at the 105th ADC Annual Awards
- OUI Inc. — Smart Eye Camera (product page)
- Company | OUI Inc.
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