Heidelberg Engineering teams up with Orbis to provide education to practitioners globally

Global eye care charity Orbis has partnered with Heidelberg Engineering to provide free clinical education for eye care professionals around the world.

During 2024, Heidelberg Engineering will sponsor three instructional virtual sessions, hosted on Cybersight, a telemedicine and e-learning platform founded by Orbis.

The organisations ran their first live session in February, which focused on diagnosing, monitoring, and managing diabetic retinopathy. It was attended by over 600 eye care professionals from over 100 countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Orbis explained, with statistics reporting that 1.1 billion people live with vision loss globally, of which 90% reside in low and middle-income countries where in places there is limited access to trained eye care professionals, Cybersight provides an opportunity for all eye health professionals to take part in continuing professional development, removing barriers such as cost and location.

With the leading causes of avoidable blindness being cataract, glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy, future sessions will guide eye care professionals in how optical coherence tomography and other technological advances, can be used to detect, treat, and prevent these common causes of sight loss.

Speaking about the partnership, Dr Hunter Cherwek, vice president of clinical services and technologies at Orbis, said: “We are so grateful to Heidelberg Engineering for its incredible support of Cybersight. This partnership will help us to globalise the best lectures and professors from across Europe and strengthen our reach to eye health professionals from around the world. Orbis has always been at the confluence of technology and training and our partnership with Heidelberg Engineering allows us to deepen the reach and impact of our mission.”

Managing director of Heidelberg Engineering GmbH, Arianna Schoess Vargas, added: “Our partnership with Orbis is one way we are bringing to life our mission of empowering clinicians to improve patient care by making best-in-class ophthalmic clinical education and content accessible to all.

“For us to be able to have a role in helping Cybersight improve patient care through education to underserved communities is not only rewarding but a true privilege.”