All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is developing a mobile app for eye patients to create awareness about hospital admission, transplantation and post-surgery follow-up.

Dr JS Titiyal, Chief, RP centre, AIIMS, Delhi said, "I think it's a demand of time. COVID has also made us realise that you have to approach people in a different manner because a physical approach may be difficult sometimes. It's only for people coming from far-off places."

"If we could be able to develop this app, a phone-based app where we can have the direct interaction with the patient and we are going to have a camera system in that which can take the photograph of the eye, especially the interior part, cornea, and this picture we can see in the national eye bank, which is 24 hours working every day and report back to the patient if they are suffering for some disease. If they have been registered with us, we can tell them what is their timeframe for coming for admission and transplantation," Dr Titiyal added on September 7.

He also pointed out the difficulty in the follow-up of a patient after any surgery. "Third important thing is after we do a transplant surgery for patients, their follow-up becomes very difficult sometimes because if somebody develops a rejection after a transplant, it has to be taken care of within a few days."

"If a patient comes after one or two weeks, then you can reverse the rejection, such a critical time is there. And if this patient can get picked up by this app, then that patient can rush to a hospital nearby hospital," said Dr Titiyal on the utility and importance of the app for follow-up of patients.

He said that the app can also be used to connect various hospitals where people are trained for transplantation. "This is also used to connect to our various hospitals where people are trained for transplantation or they can take care of our post-transplant patients. We can train them and we can discuss with them so that we can advise them what treatment can be started for that patient at that particular time," he said. Dr Titiyal further informed that the app will be an AIIMS entity only and will be a simple app.

The App is going to be an AIIMS entity only. "This app is going to be an AIIMS entity because this is not the very extraordinary type, it will be a simple app where you are going to have a photographic relationship. Fortunately, in India now every corner is connected with Wi-Fi. Everybody has a smartphone nowadays. So this is going to be a simple approach," said Dr Titiyal.