EAGLE EYE CAMERA
K.CHANDRASHEKHAR, 53 CEO, Forus Health, BENGALURU ANANDVINEKAR, 44 Ophthalmologist, Narayana Nethralaya Eye Institute, BENGALURU
“OUR MODEL ALLOWS THIS CAMERA TO BE TAKEN TO THE HINTERLAND, TO SCAN BABIES EVEN IN REMOTE AREAS”
When K. Chandrashekhar, an alumnus of BITS Pilani and IIM Calcutta, began his stint in the semiconductor business in 1988, little did he imagine that a couple of decades down the line he would be trying his hand at healthcare. In 2009, he quit his job, and the next year, launched Forus Health, which makes cameras used to diagnose preventable retinopathy (damage to the retina) in adults. Chandrashekhar’s team developed cameras that were portable, rugged, easy to use and affordable. “No one had anything like it in India,” says Chandrashekhar. “When it comes to medical devices in India, most innovations are based on re-engineering. We developed this product from scratch.” At one-fifth the price of imported devices, this product (alongside some 2,400 others from Forus) is now used in 36 countries, impacting 5 million lives.
Dr Anand Vinekar of Narayana Nethralaya, an eye hospital in Bengaluru, was looking for a portable imaging device to scan babies to cure preventable blindness, when he was introduced to the work that Forus Health was doing. The challenge Dr Vinekar brought to the table was to develop a camera with a greater field of view (130 degrees, compared to the 50-degree field of view in adult eye-scanners) which would allow the corners of a baby’s eyes—where the disease originates—to be scanned. In 2013, Narayana Nethralaya and Forus Health collaborated with the government’s department of biotechnology (which funded the project) to develop ‘Neo’ cameras.
Pre-term babies and those born weighing less than 2 kg, need to have their eyes scanned within 30 days for a condition known as retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). At 3.5 million, India has the highest number of pre-term births in the world. Cameras like these are invaluable in such situations. “There are 20,000 registered ophthalmologists in India. Of this, only 2,000 are retina specialists and less than 200 are specialists in ROP,” says Dr Vinekar. “Our model allows this camera to be taken to the hinterland, to scan babies even in remote areas. The images are uploaded to a telemedicine platform and examined by specialists.” On average, 2,500 to 3,000 babies are screened every month under the Karnataka Internet Assisted Diagnosis of Retinopathy of Prematurity programme alone. The network comprises 137 hospitals in 30 districts of the state. “This is probably one of the largest telemedicine networks in the world,” says Vinekar. ■