Jon Pollack

HelpMeSee

HelpMeSee transforms lives through innovation and surgical simulation. Our mission is to restore vision to people with visual impairment and blindness due to cataract worldwide through eye surgery simulation, product development, simulation-based training, and partnerships that promote simulation training to improve eye surgery outcomes. Today, there are one hundred million people who are visually impaired due to cataract. Seventeen million people are blind and eighty-three million are moderate to severely visually impaired. Ninety percent of this vision loss is treatable through cataract surgery to alleviate the vast majority of vision loss. Unfortunately, there are not enough surgeons to perform cataract surgeries in the poorest regions in the world with the highest rates of vision loss, namely, Africa, China, India, and Latin America. The number of people with cataract that need surgery outnumbers the surgeons needed to perform the surgeries, a number that will continue to grow exponentially. On average, it takes four to eight years for cataract surgeons to achieve competency. Our solution uses eye surgery simulation-based training to significantly shorten the time it takes for eye surgeons to build competency and perform live surgeries. We understand the complexity and large-scale change needed to reach these marginalized populations, but we cannot achieve this mission alone. HelpMeSee is building a sustainable model with partners and placing training centers in each of the poorest regions with the highest rates of vision loss to make the largest impact on this issue.