Your smartphone is already equipped to be your own virtual personal trainer—it gives you fitness insight through apps that track your speed and gait. There have also been some other health apps designed to improve your overall well-being—and that’s not even including all the bells and whistles the Apple Watch has to offer. But this latest app, Peek may actually change lives—by playing the role of eye doctor.

Developed by Andrew Bastawrous, a British ophthalmologist studying blindness in rural Africa, now anyone can take an eye exam with their phone—no expensive equipment or co-pays required. So how does it work? The test administrator (who notably does not need to be a trained healthcare worker) holds the phone 6 feet away. On the screen flashes the letter E, rotated in one of four ways. The patient then points the direction the E is facing or has an option to pass if the image is too blurry. In a little over 60 seconds, the test gives a score of the patient’s eyesight on the 20/20 vision scale. The goal of garnering this kind of information, according to Peek, is to identify and treat eye disease sooner.

And what’s even more encouraging: a recent article published in JAMA Opthamology by Bastawrous and his team indicated that the Peek method produces results as accurate as current methods of testing vision, minus all the pricey stuff. While Bastawrous is careful to point out that the app is no replacement for good local medical care, this could be a future game-changer for people living in low-income countries, where the majority of the world’s vision impairment cases are found. Trainers, eye docs, what’s next?

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