Clinical Projects
Description :
Aravind Eye Hospitals located at Tirunelveli and Pondicherry carried out comprehensive community based paediatric eye care services in 6 districts and screened about 1 million children for common eye problems in a period of three years. As the project progresses, the team documented the activities so as to develop a model that can be used anywhere in the nation to deliver paediatric eye care services. One of the outcomes of the project is to publish a manual. The proposed Manual on community-oriented Paediatric Eye Care services will cover all strategies and processes of the project activities like awareness creation, community screening, service delivery at the community level & hospital setting, human resources and infrastructure required.
Volunteer qualification / experience requirements
Preferably a student of MPH with an interest in articulating the existing documents / materials into a user friendly manual.
Project Guide
LAICO : V. Vijayakumar & A. Sekar
Aravind Eye Hospital, Tirunelveli : Dr. Meenakshi
Aravind Eye Hospital, Pondicherry : Dr. Veena
Description :
LAICO shares/showcases preferred practices that are adopted by Aravind to deliver high volume, high quality, and sustainable eye care with its partner hospitals. These are shared, in the form of real time exposure/ observation, presentations in the sessions, discussions as well as tools, templates, checklists and related literature. But it is witnessed that replicating it, in their own setting is not happening to the possible extent. So, one of the approaches to make this implementation easier is to give the participants/hospitals a practical guide (with short films as required) which will spell the details of the process, systems required, HR needed and the infrastructure requirements.
This includes developing protocols for: Clinical examination processes, required investigations and procedures, at all levels – Comprehensive eye examination in the outpatient clinics – Preoperative Evaluation for surgical patients – Preoperative Preparation and Anaesthesia – Intraoperative Considerations – Postoperative Management – Follow Up
Volunteer qualification / experience requirements
Preferably a medical graduate
Project Guide
Dr. Haripriya and Dr. Datta
Description :
Refractive error is one of the leading causes of visual impairment. Even though the solution is very cost effective, it is almost not addressed. The unmet need is very high and it is totally an untapped market. On the other side, service providers view refractive correction services as a burden, due to its complexity of managing HR, procuring and managing stocks, pricing etc., Aravind feels that if it can provide them the details of how to handle refractive correction services starting from comprehensive eye examination, setting up optical shops, training programmes available at Aravind and elsewhere for both optometrists and opticians, basic equipment/ supplies required, contact details of various suppliers, it will be of great use.
Volunteer qualification / experience requirements
Preferably an optometrists / optician
Project Guide
Dr. Kalpana, Mr. Murugesan
Description :
One of the significant dynamics for high acceptance rate at Aravind for any of the interventions (surgery, spectacles, investigation) is due to the contribution made by counsellors. This has evolved over a time at Aravind. This is a win-win situation both for the providers and patients, which many of the hospitals lack. Due to this lacuna, we have witnessed that even though the outpatients’ visits are considerable the conversion rate is below average. In such a situation, the hospitals have invested the time and energy in diagnosing the disease and left out without intervening, which is not right for the hospital and for the patient. This guide should contain the details of the knowledge and skills set required for the counsellors, who should provide training, basic training module, process of counselling, empowering patients, promoting latest technology, tips for handling non-willing patients, indicators to measure the performance of counsellors, basic infrastructure, the tools and templates required to provide effective counselling.
Volunteer qualification / experience requirements
Preferably a social worker. Fluency in Tamil language is desirable
Project Guide
Dr. Venkatesh, Ms. Dhivya
Description :
One of the most efficient ways to reach the non-customer is by reaching out to them through outreach services. In eye care, Aravind has pioneered this approach and it is also an integral part of National Programme of Blindness in India. By seeing the success of this programme, this approach of generating demand has been adopted as one of the strategy by all the INGO’s engaged in eye care. They also advocate the same to all the partner hospitals in the developing and undeveloped countries. Mr. R. Meenakshi Sundaram, Senior Outreach Manager, Aravind Eye Care System has come up a manual which details out every aspects of various outreach programme in a detailed manner. This is like a bible for eye care outreach programme. This can be used as a reference material. Reading it, synthesising it and then implementing it, is a time consuming factor, considering this fact and also easy implementation a condensed version will be very helpful. This condensed version is basically the extract from this original detailed document with specific to comprehensive eye examination and workplace camps.
Volunteer qualification / experience requirements
Preferable a Marketing or MPH post graduate
Project Guide
Mr. R. Meenakshi Sundaram
Description :
Over the years, Aravind has developed a good understanding of the need for cataract services in the community – this has informed the way Aravind’s services are designed and made available to those who need it. However, other specialty eye diseases cannot be delivered through the same mechanism – the target audience, the access barriers, the treatment modes are different. This project proposes to study the need in the community for specialty services such as corneal services, low vision services etc.
Volunteer qualification / experience requirements
Preferable a MPH or Medical Student
Project Guide
Mr. Thulasiraj, Ms. Dhivya
Description :
There are several untapped opportunities within our hospital facilities and at our outreach camps where we can educate our patients about common eye diseases. This project will focus on the development of a series of targeted communication to be placed in several common areas of the hospital.
Volunteer qualification / experience requirements
Students of Visual Communication or media
Project Guide
Dr. Kim, Ms. Dhivya
Non Clinical Projects
Description :
Aravind has extensive list of IT applications being used for enhancing eye care at various levels. Some of them are developed with an intention to share others and designed accordingly. As part of the capacity development activities by LAICO, we have started offering IT solutions to eye hospitals as per the request. Currently, we have nearly 80 hospitals using our IT solutions mainly Integrated Hospital Management System. Though we have nearly 20 IT products, we are currently offering 3 to 4 solutions. We need to package the solutions and make them ready for offering. Also, we realize from our experience that we need to develop a detailed and interactive user manual, products catalogue, user forum etc. We expect that this project should result in producing IT packages, User manual and Product catalogues.
Volunteer qualification / experience requirements
Graduates with better understanding packaging IT solutions. Developing and documenting promotional documents.
Project Guide
Mr. Ganesh Babu, Mr. Karthikeyan
Description :
We have been offering IT solutions to other eye hospitals for nearly a decade. We have broad guidelines for following the process of implementation. We often realize the lack certain steps which result in inefficiency in overall process. Though we apply our experience and improve the process, we see the need for systematic and standardized process. It also requires documentation of the process for monitoring to understand the status of the assignment. We expect that this assignment should produce standard processes and guidelines for implementing IT solutions and also mechanism for tracking them.
Volunteer qualification / experience requirements
Graduates with IT service background, preferably in the product side
Project Guide
Mr. Ganesh Babu, Mr. Guru, Mr. Karthikeyan
Description :
Aravind has abundant resource of patients and other database. Currently the databases are decentralized at centre level for functional reasons. We extract some summary level of data from all the centres to generate some standard reports and retrieve data as and when required. Also, we have developed one such central database for monitoring outcome of cataract surgeries and find very useful. We have been thinking of developing a central database to support various areas that would guide the management with evidence for planning and managing more effectively. It requires a detailed understanding of what would be interesting for the users, to decide on variables/ attributes for developing the database. This project should result in identifying data requirement for various areas for developing central database.
Volunteer qualification / experience requirements
Graduates with the background of business / hospital management and experience in identifying needs for managing
Project Guide
Mr. Thulasiraj, Mr. Ganesh Babu
Description :
Often, eye hospitals may not be in a position to understand where they stand – what their strengths and weak spots are. Such diagnosis at a macro level would help the hospitals in taking right course of action and seek support accordingly. Towards this LAICO has developed a basic assessment tool that is currently administered manually to the hospitals participating in the Vision Building workshops and one week leadership training course. However, this needs to be reviewed, validated and develop it into a dynamic tool with an inbuilt scoring system ensuring its relevance to most type of eye hospitals and make it available for a wider audience. Expected output of this of project is to have in place this dynamic tool that could be integrated into LAICO’s website and offer it as a value added service at no cost to the hospitals
Volunteer qualification / experience requirements
A management graduate with IT skills (minimum skills – expertise in MS Excel)
Project Guide
Mr. Thulasiraj, Mr. Suresh Kumar, Ms. Sashi
Description :
Healthcare is a profession where the nature of work and working habits takes a huge toll on physical and emotional health of the people working for it. It often manifests as fatigue and musculoskeletal disorders. It has a severe impact on efficiency and engagement of employee at work which ultimately results in poor patient care. While we treat symptoms i.e. spasm or pain etc., treating the cause which might be a sitting position, chair/table height, lighting at the place or slight change in lifestyle may go a long way in addressing the problem. Through this project we would like to assess workplace ergonomics at Aravind Eye Hospital, Madurai and come up with solutions which will result in professional and psycho social well-being of our employees.
Volunteer qualification / experience requirements
Student or expert from the field of ergonomics and occupational therapy
Project Guide
Ms. Dhivya