Telemedicine may help identify & treat DR

With diabetes cases worldwide expected to double in the first 30 years of the 21st century, telemedicine might be a pathway to ensuring that more patients receive care, and thus, prevent complications from retinopathy, said P. Lloyd Hildebrand, MD, Dean A. McGee Eye Institute, Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center, US.

“Remote retinal imaging with centralized interpretation allows for increased access, quality, and efficiency,” he said. This is especially true for a largely rural population.Putting together a telemedicine programme is not easy, however, Dr Hildebrand said. He offered a 10-step approach:

1. Decide whether you want to target detection or diagnostic evaluation. This knowledge will affect the protocols and technologies you’ll implement.2. Plan to measure the quality of your efforts through five parameters: reproducibility, technical referral rate, number of ungradeable eyes, accuracy, and compliance.3. Develop a viable business model. “This may be the biggest problem to developing a program, especially in the United States,” Dr Hildebrand said. “Margins are tight, and you're dealing with highly variable health plan reimbursement policies.”4. Generate useful reports.5. Push compliance. Programmes that drive compliance, such as disease registries and call systems, will be important.6. Educate, educate, educate. Because much of diabetes is a primary care disease, enlist the help of primary care physicians to inform patients about the seriousness of diabetic retinopathy and to encourage them to participate.7. Plan for the outliers - you will encounter patients who have other pathologies.8. Provide a solution; have an outlet to provide treatment.9. Understand the barriers, whether those are geographical, governmental, or something else.10. Understand that many questions about retinopathy remain to be answered.