The Indian Retinopathy of Prematurity (I-ROP) Society is now working to spur screening efforts on newborns to prevent infant blindness in remote areas besides giving an impetus to research and create a medico-legal framework to foster ethical-clinical excellence.

The society led by Prof. Raj Vardhan Azad, former director, RP Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences, AIIMS, New Delhi working on ROP for over four decades, intends to share best case practices and promote uniform guidelines on this condition. Dr Anand Vinekar, representing Narayana Nethralaya, Bengaluru, spearheaded ROP tele-medicine programs as I-ROP secretary.

Globally, ROP is the leading cause of infant blindness. Indian incidence is 1 out of 3 babies born less than 2,000 grams where 10 per cent of them would become blind by 2 months if not treated on time. Annually over 3.5 million babies are born premature in India and there are less than 100 ROP specialists to screen and treat this condition.

At the recently concluded I-ROP workshop in Bengaluru, ROP specialists from small towns and cities presented the data on the status of ROP screening and management which is being collated for government of India. During the workshop, the new ‘made-in-India’ ‘ROP camera’ was also showcased.

“We need a low cost imaging solutions to screen for ROP in the community if this programme has to be scaled up in to district level hospitals, which do not have ROP specialists. We are validating the Forus Health’s Neo camera developed under the DBT grant,” Dr. Vinekar told Pharmabiz in an email.

“Through our Karnataka Internet Assisted Diagnosis of Retina of Pre-maturity (KIDROP) outreach programme, we have just concluded a multi-centre trial in rural and semi-urban neo natal intensive care units across Karnataka with Neo camera and the results are very promising. The portability of the device and the wide-field capability are very useful in a tele-medicine setting. However for the camera to become acceptable the cost must be substantially lower. We are keenly following technological developments in this regard," he added.

Prof Mangat Dogra from PGIMER, Chandigarh, a co-investigator in the multi-centre trial said that there was no difference between the Neo images and the RetCam which is imported and gold standard diagnostic device images in most cases, during the masked study.

Forus Health had developed 3Nethra Neo for adults in collaboration with Narayana Nethralaya, for its clinical validation. “This helped us to effectively develop a device to prevent ROP blindness in pre-term babies,” said K Chandrasekhar, founder & CEO, Forus Health.

The 3Nethra Neo, according to Dr. Shyam Vasudeva Rao, founder & director, Forus Health, has 4 design patents which makes it far superior and costs one fourth of its nearest competitor.