Issue 151 Item 13 eTechnology Increases Eye Exams and Prevents Blindness

Digital imaging at centralized locations transmitted via the internet to technicians, who look for evidence or neuropathy. The Internet is not a medical device, but Inoveon, a private company, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center are using it to change the way diabetes is treated.

In separate efforts, Inoveon and Vanderbilt are expanding their operations that make use of the Internet to transmit digital photographs of patients’ eyes to centralized evaluation centers, where technicians look for evidence of disease. Complications from diabetes are a leading cause of blindness among the 16 million Americans who have the disease.

Vanderbilt, meanwhile, signed a contract with the federal Department of Veterans Affairs on Wednesday to provide services to at least 5,800 diabetic patients at the VA hospitals in Nashville and Murfreesboro.

Vanderbilt will place specialized cameras at both VA hospitals. Photographs from those five locations will travel via Internet to Vanderbilt’s evaluation center. Similar images arrive at Inoveon’s Burton Hills offices from clinics in Oklahoma, Missouri and Louisiana.

Four staff members were busy one day this week examining images on computer screens for microscopic signs of disease. Each wore special eyeglasses that gave the images a three-dimensional appearance.

Inoveon’s technology allows patients to have their eyes scanned quickly at one of the company’s service centers instead of having to make an appointment with a specialist.

The digital records should allow primary-care physicians to monitor their patients more effectively. .

The health-care system needed a fast and accurate test for eye damage that results from the high blood-sugar levels causing diabetes, Leonard-Martin said.

”Anyone who has worked with this disease feels compelled to prevent the blindness that occurs,” he said, ”because it is preventable.”

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FACT: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the percentage of obese children in the U.S. is now 15%, up from 5% to 6% in the 1970s.

JAMA. 2003;289:1805-1812, 1813-1819, 1851-1853