It was in the 1950's that Roger Armour, then a medical student in Lahore, began thinking about ophthalmoscopes.

Why, he wondered, were they so complicated and so expensive?

Couldn't these useful instruments be simpler and cheaper? Fast forward half a century and the answer is 'yes'. The Optyse is born, a pocket sized, lens-free ophthalmoscope that sells for half the price of a conventional instrument. Roger Armour's first thoughts about trying to develop a simpler ophthalmoscope were short lived. "I didn't think it was possible for someone like me without any engineering knowledge. But the idea stayed with me during my time in the NHS."

It was after a conversation with an ophthalmologist friend who'd been to Africa prompted him to get serious about the idea of a lens-free ophthalmoscope. "It took me six months to work out what to do. I then got some material from an art shop and made one. It looked such as mess I was certain it wouldn't work." He tried it anyway - first on his wife. "To my amazement I could see the retinal vessels in her fundus. And then I examined the cat......" The rest is history.