A New Frontier In Telemedicine: Making High Quality Healthcare Accessible And Affordable Through Smart Glasses (Healthcare Sensor Innovations 2019)

The presentation consists of 3 parts. The first part is a live demo of the smart glasses showing how a remote expert can follow and interact with the wearer of the glasses via video and speech. The second part is a presentation of a case in DRC Congo how first line health workers (midwives and nurses) in rural health centers get assistance from an expert in a district hospital while providing primary maternal healthcare services (pre-natal, giving birth, post natal). In a third part, we share our insights and learnings regarding telemedicine.

Steven is co-founder and chairman of Iristick, developing, producing and commercializing smart safety glasses, both for Industry and Society. He is board member of the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITG).

 

Business background

In 1992, Steven started together with Peter Verstraeten S&V Management Consultants, specialized in Supply Chain and Operations Strategy. As business entrepreneurs, they grew the company to about 100 people before selling it in 2008. Thereafter, Steven joined Ashoka Global, Washington, as strategic advisor. In this capacity, he focussed on how citizen sector organizations (and social entrepreneurs in particular) and corporations can work together successfully in creating social impact at scale in a commercially viable setting.

 

Impact investor

Today, Steven is CEO and board member of EVPA (European Venture Philanthropy Association), and chair of the Corporate Social Investment Initiative. He is an investor in SI², a for profit social impact fund, providing growth capital to European for profit social enterprises.

He is also chairman of Kampani, a social impact investment fund to unlock the potential of entrepreneurial farming in the South.

Steven also supports directly some (social) enterprises with the potential to generate major societal and/or environmental benefits.

Iristick's industrial, smart safety glasses are part of the vast and emerging AR/VR field, developed by a team of senior industry entrepreneurs, top engineers and industrial and eyewear fashion designers. After exhaustive testing of options available on the market and listening to industry needs, we designed Iristick, the first smart glasses leveraging the power of the smartphone.

We offer deskless workers topnotch tools to reduce errors and increase productivity. Field technicians are connected in real-time with remote experts, zooming in on the smallest details, to get the job done, fast and effectively.

From the start, Iristick decided to leverage this technology as well for societal purposes such as telemedicine.