LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad: A whole new world for healthcare startups

BENGALURU: At first, the LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad seems like any other specialty hospital but in the past three years it has carved out an additional dimension: as an entrepreneurship hub.

The non-profit that offers eyecare and rehabilitation to thousands of patients has in the past three years spawned at least three dozen technology product and software innovations by engineers and medical professionals, many of whom have gone on to commercialise their products.

"We are only clinicians by day," said Anthony Vipin Das, consultant ophthalmologist and head of technology at LVPEI spearheading product development related to affordable eye care. Almost two dozen functioning prototypes have come out of Srujana, the institute’s innovation centre, since it was launched two years ago in collaboration with MIT Media Lab’s Camera Culture Group to develop advanced diagnostic, therapeutic and screening tools for the human eye.

Among the innovations developed here are the world’s first braille smartphone prototype, a device to develop prosthetic eyes within 24 hours, and another to instantaneously detect eye diseases such as cataract. Sujeath Pareddy, a 21-year-old student of BITS Hyderabad who is interning at LVPEI, aims to develop the prosthetic eye at 90% less than the cost of existing models."

"Often, in extreme cases of eye cancer, the eye is surgically removed and the doctor prescribes a prosthetic eye. It takes a week to develop the eye, and it is a very laborious and costly process," said Pareddy. This is how innovations happen at LVPEI: Developers put forth their ideas and designs to clinicians and technologists running Srujana, and if approved start working on their prototypes.

Mentors, mostly people like Das and his MIT counterparts, are assigned to them. The prototypes are tested by the researchers at the institute, which is currently working on 10 projects.