Paisan Ruamviboonsuk: saving sight in Thailand

Abstract

Earlier this year, WHO announced the winners of its 2022 awards for outstanding contributions to public health. Paisan Ruamviboonsuk won the Sasakawa Health Prize for his work on diabetic retinopathy in Thailand, which led to the establishment of a cadre of nurses and technicians trained to diagnose the condition and a nationwide screening programme run by the Ministry of Public Health. Ruamviboonsuk, clinical professor at the College of Medicine, Rangsit University, Rajavithi Hospital (Bangkok, Thailand), received the award at a ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland, hosted by the World Health Assembly on May 27, 2022.Back in the mid-1990s, diabetic retinopathy accounted for almost a third of blindness in Thailand. At the time, around 4 million people in the country were living with diabetes (today there are closer to 7 million). For those in rural areas, arranging to see a specialist for their recommended annual eye examination was not always straightforward. Film-based cameras could be used to photograph the retina, but it would still take several days to make a diagnosis. Real-time diabetic retinopathy screening by deep learning in a multisite national screening programme: a prospective interventional cohort studyA deep-learning system can deliver real-time diabetic retinopathy detection capability similar to retina specialists in community-based screening settings. Socioenvironmental factors and workflows must be taken into consideration when implementing a deep-learning system within a large-scale screening programme in LMICs. Full-Text PDF Open Access