Technology Initiatives

India has the largest population of blind globally. Most of them live in the poorest parts of the country with little or no access to even basic health care facilities. One of the many obstacles in detecting and treating preventable blindness timely, is the paucity of real time community level data to aid analysis and decision making. Population level data on blindness is either dated or if available is region specific, and hence is not very useful given the regional diversity of a country like India. Further, manual data collection as seen in various community level activities, is fraught with issues of data accuracy for the purpose of reporting and decision making.

DEVELOPING SERVIS

Sankara’s unique innovation, Sankara Electronic Remote Vision Information System (SERVIS) is a real time Blindness Prevention Surveillance System which enables any eye care provider to immediately access village level information, helping it to reach out to the population in most need of eye care through targeted intervention and thus prevent blindness.

In 2015, the concept germinated at Sankara Eye Foundation, India when its Community Outreach team was looking at an efficient system to record information at the doorstep of the rural poor with data integrity being the foremost priority. Such automation was felt to be the need of the hour as more than 80% of the potentially blinding and visually impairing conditions are either preventable or curable if detected early on

Today SERVIS is transforming community mobilization and awareness generation by making it paperless! Android tablets are being used by Field workers to record patient specific data during household surveys and promoting preventive eye care awareness.

DEVELOPING SERVIS

The information collected in field is geo tagged. The gathered data provides real time information not only on field personnel activity but also blinding disease patterns and eye care utilization, thus enabling prompt intervention and planning of programs so that no one needlessly goes blind.

SERVIS was recognized with the Mobile for Good Award 2014 for utilizing technological innovations for driving social change (main health category); it supports emerging mobile solutions with transformational impact on society. SERVIS has already been deployed in action by Sankara Eye hospitals in 7 states and is being scaled up throughout the entire network across India.

SERVIS is not only unique experiment for eye care but a pioneering one in the space of development sector in India and globally when such technology is used to capture live village level data across the country.

FEATURES

GIS/GPRS enabled Android based tablet application.
Records Patient Demographic details, Medical history; Eye disease related information at household level
Assists a field worker to conduct basic visual examination.
Assists a field worker to educate household individuals about prevention from eye diseases.
GPRS enabled technology allows monitoring the field worker movement.
Geo tagging the location of households screened for eye diseases.

REAL TIME INFORMATION

Households covered during survey.
Households with patients having eye diseases.
Households with patient having systemic problems like hypertension, diabetes, or ischemic heart diseases which may lead to eye diseases in future.
Household with patients referred to camps

KNOWLEDGE CAPTURE

Capturing the details of patients having eye disease and risk factors for developing eye disease.
Capture number of patient referred to campsite and need further eye care.

KNOWLEDGE DIFFUSION

Real time information on blinding disease patterns, Risk factors leading to eye disease & Eye care intervention status in a particular region.
Planning targeted intervention as per the patient information captured during household survey.
It helps in identifying geographic areas that require immediate eye care intervention, along with areas where people are at risk of developing eye disease and require timely intervention.

IMPACT

Availability of a more engaging medium to disseminate eye care awareness information and fostering positive care seeking behaviour.
Greater number of people with access to eye care information and treatment services.
Negation of duplication of efforts with obviation of manual registers.
Improvement in morale of the field workers with distinct improvement in productivity and work conditions.
Creation of an efficient paperless system for community eye care programme.
Unique extensive data repository on the visually impaired.

IMPACT

Reduction in the process Turnaround Time at various level of outreach activities.
Time taken to do a survey per individual with SERVIS has reduced to 6.6 minutes from 11.9 minutes.
Cataract screening and referral to camp site has increased to 73 from 52.
Improvement in field worker efficiency: On an average 52 individuals were screened by SERVIS from an average of 32 households per day by a field worker as opposed to an average 33 individuals screened by manual method from an average of 17 households per day by a field worker.
Additionally, post SERVIS implementation, the cost of screening showed a significant reduction of 69.2%.

Outreach