The Cybersight team.

Eye Care Everywhere: In the Air

The Flying Eye Hospital may not be traveling, but the Orbis mission is still in flight. To supplement our postponed in-country programs during COVID-19, we pivoted to virtual training projects and learning on Cybersight.

Orbis has always been on the forefront of innovation, creating Cybersight, our telemedicine learning platform, almost 20 years ago. This technology has allowed our network of Volunteer Faculty to help doctors around the world with complex cases, and given eye health professionals an online database of lectures and learning materials.

Through Cybersight in 2020 alone, Orbis:

  • Trained 26,036 eye care professionals in 192 countries
  • Performed 746 consultations for remote patient cases
  • Received 2.3+ million views on the Cybersight video library
  • Held 107 live lectures and surgical demonstrations with 15,500+ participants

For Dr. Phara Khauv, a Cambodian ophthalmologist who has been a Cybersight power-user for more than a decade, our platform allowed him to consult with Orbis Volunteer Faculty, Dr. Saad Shaikh, even during the pandemic. When a particularly tricky case of a 10-year old with possible eye cancer arose, Dr. Khauv wanted to double-check with other doctors that he had the correct diagnosis.

“Since I work alone, Cybersight is my learning tool and my teacher as well,” says Dr. Khauv. “I grow a lot from it.”

On Cybersight he was paired with Dr. Shaik, a retinal surgeon based in Florida who has consulted on more than 200 Cybersight cases since 2006. Together, they determined that the cause of the girl's pain was actually a thorn stuck in her eye, and Dr. Khauv was able to safely remove it through surgery.

Dr. Shaikh tells us that Cybersight is a learning experience for him, too. "You tend to narrow into certain cases that don’t expand the breadth of your knowledge, but international cases force you to sometimes think differently and stay sharp with different methods of teaching.”

Virtual Flying Eye Hospital

In March of last year we had to make the difficult decision to postpone in-person learning programs. But that didn't stop us from bringing eye care education to hundreds of ophthalmic health professionals in 2020.

Carried out on Cybersight, virtual Flying Eye Hospital projects combine pre-learning modules, recorded and live lectures, and discussion sessions to get doctors, nurses, and other members of eye care teams the crucial knowledge they need to treat their communities. We initially planned virtual Flying Eye Hospital projects for those countries due to receive in-person training on board the plane. But with Cybersight, we were able to offer these projects to even more partner institutions than were previously scheduled.

2020 virtual Flying Eye Hospital project accomplishments:

  • 9 virtual Flying Eye Hospital projects: Bolivia, Cameroon, Chile, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Mongolia, Peru and Zambia
  • 851 health professional enrollments
  • 17 unique courses
  • 93 live training sessions
  • 47 Volunteer Faculty participated

Cybersight has given us an effective way to train and treat patients during the pandemic, but its success isn't stopping when social-distancing ends. We plan to use a blend of in-person and virtual learning as a new, enhanced way of training on and off our beloved plane.

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