Connected vision care for eradication of preventable blindness

90% of the visually impaired worldwide live in a low income setting, and 80% of all visual impairment can be prevented or cured provided, a timely care is given. A large portion of at risk population does not avail timely vision care due to low awareness and inability to afford nor access quality vision care. Generating high patient volumes by reaching out into the community is a general approach taken by many hospitals to provide quality and affordable vision care. However, all of them rely on semi-skilled field workers to reach out to the community. A significant challenge to the effectiveness of field workers is the paper-based systems they use to register patients, gather information about them, and analyze the collected data. The lack of online monitoring and access to real-time analytics makes the process inefficient when scaled across large geographies. This paper proposes a connected vision care wireless solution comprising of a mobile decision support system and an analysis and reporting server connected via an existing cellular infrastructure. This solution upgrades every field worker to a knowledge worker, enables automatic compliance and status tracking of patients, and provides real-time analysis for efficient program management. This paper highlights the improved efficiency of the vision care program achieved using the solution in a field trial conducted by Sankara Eye Care hospital in Tamil Nadu, India.