The eye factor

An eye testing device that identifies eye ailments much before you go to a doctor.

There are 39 million blind people in the world,of whom 12 million are in India, says K Chandrashekhar. A number big enough for Chandrashekhar and his friend Shyam Vasudeva Rao to design the 3Nethra,a pre-screening ophthalmology device that helps diagnose eye ailments much before you go to a doctor.

Of the 12 million blind people in India,about 80 per cent,or 10 million,could have been saved if they had their problems diagnosed earlier,says Chandrashekhar. But laxity in eye check-ups,coupled with a disproportionate doctor-patient ratio,means that by the time patients go to a doctor,the problem is irreversible.

As of now,15 of these devices,first introduced in the market in April this year,have been installed in hospitals in Puri,Bhubaneswar and Chennai. But the idea is to place 3Nethra strategically in locations such as general hospitals,diagnostic centres,diabetes care centres,optical shops,kiosks,railway stations,malls and other such crowded places,where people will be encouraged to take an eye test. Nethra will detect illnesses such as cataract,cornea-related problems,diabetic retinopathy,glaucoma and refractive errors and a printed report will be generated. People with problems can then take the print-out to the nearest eye hospital. This way,the patient wont have to go through expensive tests and the doctors,already strapped for time,can get down to treating the patient straightaway.

Currently,eyecare requires expensive diagnostic devices for screening,especially since one single device is used for one problem. When we set out to develop a low-cost device that would help ophthalmologists cure eye ailments,our aim was to help the people of rural India diagnose these diseases, says K Chandrashekhar,whose innovation won him the Samsung Innovation Quotient award this year.

The device examines the cornea,the retina and the refraction powers of the eye. The technique is non-invasive and the device needs only a semi-skilled technician to operate and the patient will be checked for five major eye-related ailments that together make up 90 per cent of blindness in India. What it will do in rural areas is,it will encourage the entire population to screen for ailments rather than just 7-10 per cent of the people who usually get screened, he says.

Chandrashekhar and Rao quit their jobs Rao was Technical Director at Philips Healthcare and Chandrashekhar was Director,Strategy,of NXP Semiconductors to set up their own start-up,Forus Health Private Limited,in 2010. The Bangalore-based firm they set up was started with the idea of not just screening but also treating the blind. Chandrashekhar says that while working on the idea,they realised that they had to help find that authentic patient for ophthalmologists. Given the fact that there are about 15,000 ophthalmologists in India,the ratio of opthalmologists to patients is 1:70,000. Our first aim was to identify the patients who really need, he says.

As of now,Chandrashekhar says,there are two variants of 3 Nethra. The first one,3 Nethra Classic,checks the retina and the cornea,and the 3 Nethra Royal screens for refractive errors in addition to the retina and cornea. The first one is priced at Rs 4.75 lakh and the second one at Rs 5.75 lakh, he says.

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Chandrashekhar and Rao however want to take their idea to the next level. We want to use cloud computing,where the images of the scanned patient can be directly transferred to the nearest ophthalmologist, he says. The idea is to help doctors save the time they spend on each patient and enable them attend to more patients.