Eye Health Hero: N. Kasthuri

Mrs. Kasthuri, Bio-Medical Engineer has been working at Aravind Eye Hospital & Postgraduate Institute of Ophthalmology, Madurai since 2005 with a background of Diploma in Electronics Engineering. Later she completed AMIE and ME specializing in Electronics and Communication Engineering and System. She also passed Postgraduate Diploma in Hospital Administration.

Kasthuri has been working in the Ophthalmic Instruments Maintenance Division for over 16 years and has been responsible for:

• Installation, spare management, care, routine maintenance and repair of various Biomedical Instruments and Equipment used in Eye Hospitals.
• Conducting short term training course in the Repair and Maintenance of Ophthalmic Equipments and Instruments for National and International Trainees.
• Works related to NABH (National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers) like Preparing Preventive Maintenance plan, Calibration plan, Annual Maintenance Contract and executing it for various ophthalmic critical equipment.
• Calibration of the instruments like Applanation tonometers, Keratometer, Sphygmomanometer, etc.
• Operation and breakdown maintenance of Ophthalmic Instruments like Phaco, Vitrectomy, Eximer Laser, Femtosecond laser, NDYAG laser and other diode lasers.
• She is also involved in the Research & development work in ophthalmic field focusing on developing cost effective ophthalmic devices that help for patient care delivery at a large scale.

On the part of teaching and training, Ms.Kasthuri along with 3 other faculty conducted Short term Maintenance of Ophthalmic Instruments and Equipments course in Central Hospital, Mzuzu, Malawi in the year 2017. This has helped the charity care eye hospitals in the African region in addressing the maintenance of ophthalmic equipment and instruments proactively so as to help the ophthalmologists in performing the surgeries without hurdle.

Ms. Kasthuri has showed lot of interest in developing innovative eye care products that paved the way in easing the operational procedures to perform large volume of surgeries. The Innovation highlights that helped the patient care service at AECS are:

1. Pen mounted CCTV for low vision patients – The AECS Instruments Division used to make CCTV cameras for reading purposes which helps the low vision people to read. It will be helpful if they have device to look what they are writing. Considering the purpose, she had developed the pen mounted CCTV camera that displays what the Low Vision Patients are writing using the pen.
2. Portable Indirect Ophthalmoscope using prism fixed with Spectacles –
Indirect ophthalmoscopes available in the market are using mirrors in the viewing system which has some transmission loss. She used four internal reflecting prisms to avoid the loss and fixed it on the spectacles by using the LED light which has less power consumption and high life span. It is an inexpensive and less weight spectacle indirect ophthalmoscope.
3. Frenzel goggles at low cost :
Frenzel goggles that are available in the market are very expensive. The newly developed inexpensive Frenzel goggles using swimming goggles and the LEDS helped to reduce the cost for the end users.
4. Cost effective High frequency RF cutter for orbit surgery:
To have minimal thermal damage during surgery, RF cutters are used.

“As the Ophthalmology service deeply associated with state-of-art technology, my main focus is to ensure good maintenance of ophthalmic instruments and equipment, avoiding any break down of ophthalmic devices during patient examination or performing surgeries. With this in mind, I always think and work on Innovation of cost effective ophthalmic devices that help the practitioner and the end user at large at National and International level especially for the patients from under developed/ developing countries. As a team, we at Aravind Instruments Division proactively study the product nature, the technical know-hows and rectify any issues in a timely manner and disseminate the same by conducting short term training programmes.”

– Mrs. N.Kasthuri