Ophthalmologist used Eyer to carry out exams and solve doubts on diagnostics.

Imagine a floating hospital with medical and dental offices, surgical center, complete ophthalmological room, analysis lab, medication room, vaccination room and infirmary beds. More than that: equipments for examinations as X-ray, electrocardiogram, mammograph and treadmil ergometer.

This is São Francisco Boat Hospital, built to take health and medical care to more than 1 thousand riverside communities in the Amazon Region. Associação e Fraternidade São Francisco de Assis na Providência de Deus, a Brazilian charity organization, idealized the boat and made dozens of expeditions in 2019.

One of them was in the municipality of Terra Santa, in Pará, from October 21 to 30. The expedition counted on several volunteers in different healthcare areas, such as ophthalmology, pediatrics, oncology, psychiatry, dermatology, plastic, orthodontics, inter alia.

Ophthalmologist Mariana Lafetá was one of the volunteers in that trip. “Each specialist has an office on boat and we travel from town to town offering medical care to the population. We consulted 4,052 people altogether”, she tells.

Regarding eyes, the doctor emphasizes that the main disease diagnosed was dry eye syndrome. Moreover, there were many cases of refractive errors, cataract, presbyopia (known as eyestrain), pterygium (known as surfer’s eye), blepharitis and meibomitis – these latter affecting glands around the eyelids. There were also cases of glaucoma and, in a very low rate, diabetic retinopathy.

Eyer

The doctor took Phelcom Eyer handheld fundus camera to the expedition. “Due to the great number of patients, I chose to use the device just in cases of diagnostic doubts and patients with glaucoma. Being able to email exams to the ones who had email addresses was interesting. This way, they could use them in future consultations”, emphasizes Lafetá.

The ophthalmologist says the equipment is easy to use and practical. “It is easy to carry out exams, take photos, find them among files and store afterwards. We can also send or print images, which I consider very interesting, besides getting to access them from anywhere with internet connection. I really liked it”, she analyzes.

Phelcom

“Eyer’s main goal is to democratize and take access to healthcare to locations presently suffering from infrastructure deficit in the area, such as of specialists and equipment. With portability, accessible prices and the possibility of remote diagnose, via cloud, we can help healthcare professionals to assist more people”, say startup Phelcom Technologies founders, José Augusto Stuchi, Flávio Pascoal Vieira and Diego Lencione.

According to the first World Report on Vision, developed by the World Health Organization (WHO), 2,2 billion people around the world have a vision impairment. From this sum, 1 billion cases would be avoidable or remediable, such as myopia, cataract, glaucoma and hyperopia.