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In Pursuit of Excellence in Eye Care
Sankara Nethralaya is a non-profit, non-commercial and exclusive ophthalmic referral hospital that was founded in 1978. Apart from providing excellent "sight restoring services", the organization is also involved in teaching ophthalmic and paramedical sciences at undergraduate, postgraduate and doctorate levels. It is also engaged in conducting basic and clinical research in ophthalmic diseases. Over the years the hospital has crossed many major milestones and is acclaimed as one of the best Ophthalmic Referral Hospitals in Asia. It also possesses Quality Certification under ISO 9000::2001 series with Ansi Rab and UKAS certification. It is gratifying to note that 43% of the surgeries done at our hospital are on poor and indigent rural patients from remote villages, free of cost.
Vision Research Foundation, a sister organization, is engaged in extensive basic and clinical research in ophthalmology. It has very well equipped laboratories in Microbiology, Histopathology, Biochemistry, Genetics and Immunology. These departments undertake many collaborative Research Programmes with institutes in America, Japan, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Sankara Nethralaya believes in excellence all round, namely, patient care, research, education and training.
In addition this center will also cater to certain special molecular biological diagnostic tests for which Sankara Nethralaya has developed quite a few cost effective techniques which are not available as a routine in most of the laboratories. The blood specimens from the patients will be collected at this center and couriered to Chennai for conducting these tests. This will no doubt be a boon to the patients and referral doctors located at Bangalore. This extension center will also extend out-patient services for patients who come for comprehensive eye examination.
With 75% of the Indian population living in villages where doctor-patient ratios with up-to-date medical facilities are abysmally low, silent suffering is a common and heart rendering phenomena which cries for attention. Telemedicine can play an important role in these areas in reducing the incidence of curable and preventable blindness. Ophthalmology is a speciality that lends itself easily to Telemedicine. With the wide spread of telecommunication facilities extending up to many villages it is now possible to reach medical help to those who have been till now considering themselves unfortunate. It is emphasized that this effort will minimize delay/waiting time for diagnosis of an ocular disease and will be cost effective too as the patients need not travel to far off towns with its attendant expenses, foregoing their daily earnings in their villages. An added benefit will be the facility it provides to train ophthalmologists serving in rural areas.
Dr. Devi Shetty, Managing Director, Narayana Hrudayalaya, Dr. Alok Roy, Vice-chairman, Asia Heart Foundation and Mr. Rajesh Shah, Chairman, On-line Telemedicine, Ahmedabad have been the main source of inspiration for us to start the Telemedicine Centre at Bangalore. Naryana Hrudayalaya and the Asia Heart Foundation have introduced the concepts of Telemedicine most effectively by delivering state-of-art diagnostic and curative cardiac care to various district hospitals through the main HUB located at the Telemedicine Centre at Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangalore and at their hospital in Kolkata. This facility was inaugurated by Dr. K. Kasturirangan, Chairman of ISRO, on 23rd Aug 2002. Published on 21st November, 2002
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Copyright
2008, Chennai Interactive
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Tele-Ophthalmology - Giving urban specialized eye care to the rural population.
The number of surgeries performed per annum has increased from 900 in 1979 to 25,941 in the year 2001 - 2002. We have been involved in extending free services to the economically weaker sections of the society since its inception. From the very beginning this institution has been following the 'Base Hospital Concept' for doing camp surgeries as it is of the firm belief that the non-paying patients should also get the same type of treatment as that of the paying-patients.
Sankara Nethralaya entered its twenty fifth year of service to the community in September 2002. It is reckoned as one of the leading tertiary referral ophthalmic hospitals in South East Asia. Sankara Nethralaya has set up an extension center at Bangalore where tele-medicine facility has been added for examining the patients who directly report to the extension center and also patients who are referred to by Ophthalmologists in and around Bangalore seeking referral opinion.
Lt. Governor Mr. N.N. Jha, Andaman & Nicobar Island who visited our hospital recently was very much impressed with our facilities and the recently introduced Telemedicine facilities and as a follow up measure, he deputed Mr. S. Hemachandran, Development Commissioner and Commissioner of Health and Administration, Andaman & Nicobar Island to our organisation to explore the possibilities of collaboration with our Foundation.
Sankara Nethralaya would like to emerge as a trendsetter in introducing telemedicine in Ophthalmology practice in India. It is proposed to initially have two outstation telemedicine centres one at Bangalore and another in a rural area in and around Chennai. The project involves setting up of an central hub centre at the main hospital complex of Sankara Nethralaya at Chennai and two outstation telemedicine (TM centres) at two locations as indicated in the foregoing paragraph. The central hub centre will have the TM Control Room, Consultant Room and appropriate communication, Video Conferencing and IT Infrastructure. The outstation centre will have a Consultant Room and appropriate communication, Video Conferencing and IT infrastructure to transmit the images to the central hub centre for evaluation by the experts.
At the TM centre to be located in the rural area, required equipments will be mounted in a mobile vans tailor made for the purpose, so that the facility including the infrastructure required for transmission of images could be taken to the doorsteps of the rural population to make the project more purposeful and also to extend the facility to more number of rural patients.
