Narayana Nethralaya Pilots Breakthrough Telemedicine on iPhone in Quest to End Blindness in Children

iPhone now truly an EYE-Phone

Narayana Nethralaya Postgraduate Institute of Ophthalmology, Bangalore which has been involved in pediatric community eye outreach programs for over 25 years has helped evolve a unique tele-medicine software which allows screening of rural and semi-urban infants for a potentially blinding condition called Retinopathy of Prematurity along with other common conditions including ocular cancers.

The institute has helped provide the access of this software on the iPhone. The development is said to have large consequences in reducing the blindness burden of the country.

“Retinopathy of prematurity is the leading cause of preventable infant blindness worldwide. In India, over 8% of 27 million births each year are at risk of this potentially blinding condition. Roughly if 100 ‘at-risk’ infants are screened, 15-20% may require treatment that can prevent blindness. This requires a fast and efficient system of screening infants especially in the peripheral rural areas where expertise is lacking”, said Dr Anand Vinekar, Project Co-Ordinator & Pediatric Retinal Surgeon, Narayana Nethralaya, Bangalore. “Since we began 2 years ago in 7 districts of Karnataka, we have successfully treated over 150 infants and screened over 1500, but we used the ‘store and forward’ technology that was slow and did not solve security and storage issues.” Dr Vinekar remarked.

“With the experience of over 56,000 images of infant retinas in our database, we required a dedicated web-based software with progressive viewing to speedily allow access to our experts at the base hospital. This quest lead to the development of this new technology” said Dr Bhujang Shetty, Chairman of Narayana Nethralaya.

“There isn’t anything more rewarding than seeing the anxious look of a mother with a new born at risk of blindness and giving her reassurance that the best care is only a click away on a doctors iPhone” said Sham Banerji, CEO of i2iTeleSolutions, the collaborating software partner.

“The i2i team is proud that our CARE TeleOphthalmology software connects ROP specialists to pre mature infants in the farthest corners of India”, said Mr Banerji.

The i2i Teleopthalmology Application running on Apple’s iphone ushers in a new era of telemedicine letting doctors see amazingly clear images of the retina and report findings anywhere, anytime, realtime. The new pilot will run for 36 months at which time we expect TeleROP to be deployed on a much broader scale across the country and soon in other countries linking them in this unique way.

NOTE TO EDITORS:
Narayana Nethralaya Postgraduate Institute of Ophthalmology is one of the leading eye care institutes of the country. Having served the community for over 25 years, this superspeciality Ophthalmology hospital has two units in Rajajinagar and in the Health City on Hosur Road respectively. The institute is an internationally recognized training centre and has over 27 departments catering to various sub-specialties. NN is committed to providing tertiary level eye care to the underserved sections of our society especially in the outreach through continual improvement in technical excellence through innovation and passion.

i2i TeleSolutions is a global innovator in Telemedicine software and services. Headquartered in Singapore, with its R&D centers in Bangalore and Chennai, the company’s businesses include i2iCARE, a platform of software products for TeleOpthalmology, TeleRadiology, TeleCardiology etc. and i2iCONNECT suite of hosted Telemedicine services. The company has sales operations in Asia, Europe and the Americas. More information is located at www.i2itelesolutions.com.

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