Dawn Chmielewski profiles a stunning mHealth innovation from “Be My Eyes”:

“A new app created by Danish craftsman Hans Jørgen Wiberg seeks to make life easier for the blind by connecting them with sighted volunteers. Be My Eyes allows anyone with a visual impairment to ask a sighted volunteer for help with something that requires normal vision. “As a blind person, you are 100 percent sure that the person who answers the call is willing to help you,” said Wiberg, who has tunnel vision and expects to eventually go blind. “As a helper, if you don’t have the time, you don’t answer.” Wiberg, who serves as the regional chairman of a Dutch organization for the blind, said many of his blind friends use Apple’s FaceTime video conferencing application to ask sighted friends for help when they’re alone in their homes, and need a second set of eyes. But that can feel like an imposition, he said. Be My Eyes seeks to build upon the success of live video-conferencing technology by recruiting a network of volunteers who were willing to lend a hand. In April 2012, Wiberg the pitched his idea at a Startup Weekend technology competition in Aarhus, Denmark — and won the prize for the most innovative concept… …Since launching this week in Apple’s App store, the app has already attracted 29,287 volunteers and 2,600 blind and visually impaired users. It’s available worldwide, in 10 languages live in the AppStore and has been translated to 31 languages (10 of them crowdsourced)“

I wonder how long it will be before the innovative team at BeMyEyes launch a reversed service eg. so people with sight can get help from those who are visually impaired.

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