by Darren Coverley, Product Manager at Peek Vision
Peek's software in action in Tanzania
Peek has come a long way since our first product launched in 2016. Today, our Peek Acuity clinically-validated smartphone vision test is embedded into an end-to-end software and data intelligence platform which helps eye health workers across the world deliver services more efficiently and equitably.
In this post, I’ll be looking back at some of our main product developments in 2023, as well as looking forward to what we’re planning for the year ahead.
It would be tempting to say that 2023 started with a bang. Tempting, but wrong! For our team, the year began by focusing on essential back-end technical work upgrading our server technology and improving our testing capabilities.
Whilst our users won’t have noticed any new features as a result of this work, it hugely improved the maintainability of our software, which in turn sets us up for better scalability. It took Peek and our partners ten years to reach our first million people; last year, we reached three million and our pace is still accelerating. So it’s essential that our software is in good shape and ready for growth. The server upgrade has made loading times up to 97% faster for our users and our testing capabilities are now greatly improved, so it’s time well spent.
2023 also saw us complete a user satisfaction survey for Peek Admin (the data bit of our platform that tracks progress and helps to ensure no one is left behind). 84% of respondents reported being satisfied with Admin, which gives us an excellent baseline to maintain and improve on as we seek to move our product to be more user-led.
Something which has been a persistent problem for our users is the need to manually upgrade our app every time a software update is released. It’s all too easy to miss doing this but missing updates means missing critical new features and security updates that can cause problems further down the line. We’ve now created a progressive Web App for Peek Capture (the screening and data capture bit of our platform) which removes the manual process of upgrading each time we release.
One of the new features our users might have noticed when their software updated is a new driver screening feature which we developed with our partners CBM. In October CBM delivered a special eye screening programme for truck drivers in Pakistan which used this new feature and we’re looking forward to seeing how it’s used in the coming months.
We’re always working behind the scenes to fix bugs, maintain our code base and get new insights and ideas from our users. In just three years we’ve almost doubled the number of people working on our product, recruiting new software developers, a brilliant new product team and building a fantastic QA and testing team. That means you can look forward to some exciting updates and new features in 2024. ”
Darren Coverley
Peek Vision Product Manager
A big project we’ve been working on for some time now is our ability to support translation of our software into different languages. You might think that the main challenge here is in translating the words our users see on screen, but we actually need to do a lot of preparatory work so our software can support multiple languages.
That work is now close to completion and a French translation of RAAB7 was released at the end of last year. We’re now working on the French version of our main software platform and plan to release it later this year with other languages following afterwards. We’ve been working closely with our partners on this to ensure we prioritise the translations that will have the most impact, and we’re really grateful for their support and guidance.
A recurring theme in recent months is the need to integrate Peek into national and district health management systems. This is a major piece of work which began last year and is continuing into 2024. It’s not straightforward – different health management systems are in use across the locations where our software is used and each integration requires new problem-solving and collaboration. But we’re excited to be progressing our work on this vital area and looking forward to testing it later on in the year.
As ever, we couldn’t do our work without the support of our incredible partners – the people who use our software and services to deliver sight-saving eye care in some of the most challenging locations. We are truly grateful to work with each and every one of you.
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