Curing Blindness in the Developing World

1. Curing Blindness in the Developing World Team: Aidan Lynch FelimRos McMahonEoin O' Brien Maria O' Connor Mentor: Daniel O'Byrne

2. The Need • 37 million blind worldwide • 9 million in Africa with preventable blindness • 50-75% due to cataracts

3. What is a Cataract? • A clouding of the natural lens, the part of the eye responsible for focusing light and producing clear, sharp images. • This may be removed in under than 10 minutes, restoring sight

4. Why the crisis? Developed world Africa • Rate of 6000 cataract operations per million • Surplus of cataract surgeons, shortage of cataracts to maintain skills! • Rate of only 350 cataract operations per million • On average 1 Cataract surgeon per million

5. Right To Sight Launched in 2006 by Mary Robinson and Ralph Fiennes

6. Right To Sight Angola Cameroon D.R. Congo Ethiopia Kenya Malawi Rwanda South Africa India

7. Not Just For Doctors • A cataract surgeon needs to be trained by a cataract surgeon. • But people do not need to be doctors to be trained, such as this cataract surgeon in Malawi

8. Our Training Simulator impacts 5 of the UN’s 8 Millennium Development Goals

9. Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger Target 1.A: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day Target 1.B: Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people Target 1.C: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

10. Achieve Universal Primary Education • Target 2.A: • Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling • Approximately 90% of visually impaired children in low-income countries are deprived of schooling

11. Reduce Child Mortality • Target 4.A: • Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate • Up to 60% of children in low income countries are likely to die within one year of becoming blind. Moreover, around 500,000 children become blind each year

12. Improve Maternal Health Target 5.A: Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio

13. Develop a Global Partnership for Development Target 8.F: In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies. Our simulator provides trainee surgeons with an invaluable training resource, by using existing technology in a new and unique way.

14. How We Can Help

15. How We Can Help • We set out to develop a training simulator that will be used to rapidly transfer the most delicate of cataract surgery skills SAFELY and CHEAPLY • Working with Dr. Colman from Right to Sight we broke the procedure into discrete steps • We then modelled the steps in our training simulator

16. Current Solution • The EYESi is the only simulator currently available • But this is still in the development stage • And costs €180,000

17. Our Solution • Running on a Microsoft Windows PC • Using two motion sensitive controllers • Total cost less than $500

18. Sounds great Does it work? • Studies have shown that the number of complications for an eye surgeon decreases exponentially over the first hundred procedures. • Simulator training greatly shortens this learning period and allows surgeons to learn in a measured and controlled environment

19. Sounds great Does it work?

20. Demo

21. Impact • This training simulator will greatly reduce the time taken to train new surgeons. • Resulting in a greater number of surgeons. • It will allow existing surgeons to monitor the progress of trainees online.

22. Innovation • We have taken existing low cost equipment • Combined it in a way in which it was never intended to be used • To combat a very real problem facing millions

23. Technology • Infrared LED / Camera • Wiimote • Bluetooth • Web server

24. Technology

25. Technology

26. Technology

27. To Date • We now have all the major surgical steps modeled in our simulator, along with some general hand-eye coordination levels. • A scoring system that monitors the key aspects of the students performance. • The ability to adjust the difficulty level of the different tasks. • And an online system that allows students and surgeons to share results and discuss their progress.

28. Extendibility • This technology could be used to train surgeons in many different procedures. • The technique we have used is not limited to medical applications and could be used in any hand-eye coordination training.

29. Extendibility

30. Team • As a team we have been greatly inspired by the potential impact of our training simulator. • We are building an online community to support our student colleagues in Africa. • And very much looking forward to taking this to Cairo next week.

31. To Recap • 37 million blind worldwide. • 1 Cataract surgeon per million. • 50-75% of preventable blindness in Africa due to cataracts. • Our simulator offers the chance to really speed up the training of new surgeons.

32. Questions