The fight against diabetes induced eye disease in the Pacific has taken a big step forward with the installation of new retinal diabetic screening software in Fiji’s Lautoka and Suva Hospitals.

This advance in the prevention of blindness has been funded with the support of the Fred Hollows Foundation and the Reddy Lions Vision Group. This is part of the Retinal Diabetes Screening (RDS) programme, developed over a period of more than 10 years under the guidance of Auckland University’s Associate Professor Gillian Clover (now retired), in association with the Lions District 202A New Zealand, Lions International SightFirst programme, and local Lions Clubs in Lautoka and Ba, and supported throughout by Hamilton-based practice management software company, Houston Medical.

The new software, VIP.net Vision, is an advanced practice management system which provides much improved functionality and usability for practitioners in hospitals, and allows better use to be made of strictly limited specialist medical staff time.

“Houston’s software has made a huge contribution to consistency of care for persons with diabetes eye disease in Fiji,” said Associate Professor Clover. “It enables patient ophthalmic records to be available no matter where the patient presents – whether it be at base hospital or outreach mobile services to peripheral hospitals. Each patient’s information can be retained and reviewed as they progress through appointments for screening, ophthalmic examination and laser treatments.”

However, while both Fijian hospitals now benefit from world class ophthalmology practice software, local infrastructure constraints required additional development by Houston Medical’s software team. Since broadband data communications are available only in the main centres, in order to run RDS clinics in outlying areas, Houston Medical staff had to develop a special programme to allow copies of the data (including high-resolution photographic images) to be stored on a notebook PC for later download to the hospital’s main systems.

“As well as more functionality, usability and reliability, the new software offers much greater customisation capability and automation,” says Houston Medical managing director Derek Gower. “With VIP.net’s rules based workflow, alerts pop up when important data is overlooked, so now technicians or semi-skilled operators can be engaged in screening of patients with only qualifying cases referred to the ophthalmologist.”

The World Health Organisation estimates that almost 12% of Fijians and 20% of Indofijians have diabetes. Although there are no official figures on the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy, a complication of diabetes, according to one report, is the second most common cause of vision loss, after cataract, in one hospital in Fiji.

Now that the Fiji hospital implementation of VIP.net Vision is bedded in, Houston Medical will be working on similar services for hospitals in Tonga, Samoa and the Solomon Islands, in accordance with the ‘Pacific Islands Guidelines for the Screening and Management of Diabetic Retinopathy, 2009’, which Houston VIP.net supports.

Houston Medical has been contracted by Canterbury DHB to provide retinal diabetic screening software systems and has also just completed six months of evaluation work with Counties Manukau DHB for upgrade of their ophthalmology systems to Houston Medical’s VIP.net Vision.

“This is further vindication of our work in this area which spans more than ten years throughout Australasia and the Pacific,” said Mr Gower.