Narayana Nethralaya’s unique iPhone project helps infants with eye disorders in remote districts.
In a remote village in Bidar district, pediatricians are replacing prescription pads with mobile phones to connect with Bangalore-based experts who, in turn, armed with Apple iPhones, are able to diagnose the eye condition of three-month-old babies.
Welcome to telemedicine 2.0. “The iPhone’s pinch, drag and drop capabilities, coupled with its good image resolution, are capable of detecting Retinopathy of Prematurity (RoP),” said Dr Anand Vinekar, pediatric retinal surgeon at Narayana Nethralaya.
Cashing in on the power of handheld devices, the Bangalore-headquartered institute has tied up with the Karnataka government for a pediatric community outreach programme, which involves screening infants in the rural areas for the potentially blinding condition.
The institute plans to rollout this application in other states as well.
According to WHO, India is suffering from the third epidemic of RoP after US in the 1950s and 70s. And of 27 million babies born, 8.4% weighing less than 2kg may be prone to the deadly condition. The RoP affects the retinas of babies, which can cause permanent blindness if it is not screened within the first 3-4 weeks of childbirth.
The institute has conducted pilot projects in six districts — Bangalore Urban, Rural, Mandya, Tumkur, Bidar, Gulbarga— screening 1,600 infants and treated over 160 infants prone to RoP.
Narayana Nethralaya has also tied up with i2i TeleSolutions to provide collaborative software to run the application on i-Phone.
Assisting doctors in their mission of live diagnosis is a RedCam, a retinal camera with a 130 degree field of view, taking snapshots of the child’s retinal condition. These raw images are beamed over the internet in an encrypted format that is stored in remote servers in the UK.
The Karnataka government is in the process of procuring two RedCams costing Rs1 crore and laser equipment of Rs20 lakh for the programme run under the aegis of National Rural Health Mission (NHRM).
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