Objective
During the past ten years there has been a technical revolution in eye surgery in developed countries Due to the lack of a portable operating and diagnostic microscope many of these developments can only be utilised in Teaching Hospitals in the West and not at all in the Developing World. More than 35 million people in the world suffer from operable blindness. Despite the efforts of man excellent charities it is impossible to keep up with new cases of blindness, and the backlog remains. One major cause is the lack of portable operating and diagnostic microscopes. Also in most developed countries there is pressure on ophthalmic surgeons to provide day case cataract surgery in outreach clinics, but the lack of such a machine imposes restrictions. It is only major centres in the West and some university and private units elsewhere, which can enjoy the benefits of small incision surgery. Consequently surgery taking place away from these centres has to rely on more traditional large incision E CCE and ICCE techniques. The current instrumentation has several basic limit ations for general usage:
1. No integrated operating and diagnostic system available
2. Current systems due to size and weight require fixed operating cent res
3. High costs ($30,000+) restrict use to major centres
4. Current product s use bespoke optics which are heavy and expensive
5. Current lack of automatic focusing creates need for heavy and cumbersome foot pedalsystems.
6. Diagnostic requirements need several different magnification devices.
Thus the project will focus on the development of individual lightweight and inexpensive components, each being approved in clinical trials, and in conclusion developing an integrated lowcost complete system. To achieve these ends requires a close International liaison between an Engineering University, Ophthalmic and Engineering Development Companies and Teaching and Research Surgeons. Due to the high level of cross national clinical trials required at each stage the SME Partners have been chosen for their expertise in the conduct of recorded clinical trials.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinesurgery
- social sciencespolitical sciencespolitical transitionsrevolutions
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticsmicroscopy
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CRS - Cooperative research contractsCoordinator
08860 Castelldefels - Barcelona
Spain