The Doctor Is Out, and These Babies Are Healthier For It


The Karnataka Internet Assisted Diagnosis of Retinopathy of Prematurity program has trained and accredited non-physician imagers to screen premature newborns for retina disease, which has a small window of diagnosis for treatment to be effective. This “task-shifting” model allows trained imagers to replace specialists for the screening by going into the field and using a low-cost and indigenously developed camera to upload images to a telemedicine platform, where a retina specialist makes a diagnosis. They have screened 70,000 infants and several other countries have adopted KIDROP’s “task-shifting” model.

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