ITU, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Social Action of Senegal, is piloting an innovative solution to enhance the accessibility of timely diabetic retinopathy (DR) diagnosis for patients. The objective of this project is to test the feasibility of leveraging telemedicine and emerging technologies, such as AI, to help detect DR, enabling a greater number of diabetic patients to undergo timely screening and receive appropriate treatment.
There were an estimated 135,000 cases of diabetes in Senegal in 2017, and this number is projected to increase in the future. However, the scarcity of qualified specialists and limited healthcare infrastructure pose challenges in providing regular eye examinations to individuals at risk. Currently, only 48.5% of health centers in the country have access to ophthalmological units.
To address these issues, the project is deploying a telemedicine platform that enables ophthalmologists to remotely diagnose DR using digital images of the retina acquired through a portable fundus camera. The platform also incorporates an integrated Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm, which assists ophthalmologists in automatically classifying and evaluating the retinal images. This AI-powered feature is expected to enhance both the accuracy and speed of screening, ultimately improving the availability and accessibility of DR screening for diabetic patients in Senegal.
Two clinics were selected in collaboration with MSAS for project piloting in June 2020. An open-source telemedicine platform was pre-configured and adjusted for the use in selected clinics. An on-the-ground training of local medical personnel was organized and conducted in October 2020 and better connectivity was provided to the two pilot clinics to improve operational capacity. As of May 2023, more than 400 diabetic patients were screened with the help of the solution.
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