Eye Health Hero: Udayakumar Balakrishnan

Mr. Udayakumar Balakrishnan is working in LAICO-AECS for the past 6 years. His core activity is anchoring training courses for Hospital Administrators & Managers. He had trained about 116 Administrators which includes doctors and managers, from 15 countries across the world and mostly from the third world nations. He is also organising training for AOPs and counsellors and conducted customised courses and onsite trainings for eye hospitals in several states of India.

He is also actively engaging in dissemination of best practices to other eye care organisations across the world, through the capacity building activities of LAICO.

He is personally interested in bringing innovative ideas for better and safe patient care in hospital. He plays a key role in the innovation forum of Aravind named Aravind Centre for Eye care innovations (ACEi) and its activities like organising workshops influenced by IHI (Institute for Healthcare Improvement) concepts which has helped everyone understand the concept of innovation & PDSA (Plan Do Study Act) cycles. Other workshops on how to disseminate a new innovation & patent them were very helpful for early innovators.

He is also organising periodic meetings where all the best practices and innovative ideas from each centre are shared with everyone in the forum. He is instrumental in implementing all these new ideas in various Aravind centres. He has supported in organising hackathons where problem statements from all AECS centres were collected and a team of doctors and AOPs worked together to come up with innovative ideas to solve many problems, most of them were also published in reputed journals.

Through these innovations we were able to improve patient care, safety and efficiency. He acts as an axle of the ACEi forum, building a strong system and culture which fosters innovations and best practices across AECS and to the entire eye care fraternity by sharing and disseminating these innovations and best practices.

Patient centred care and health education are his other areas of interest, and he has been contributing in developing eye health education materials and organising awareness programmes in both inside the hospital and in the community.

He had developed manuals for Medical records Management and Counselling and been contributed in many research studies along with reputed institutions like University of Michigan, IIM Udaipur etc.,

Apart from eye care, he is actively and regularly engaging in general community welfare and development activities for the upliftment of poor, downtrodden, and marginalised.

“There are few professions in which we can help, support, guide, facilitate, serve people directly and can see the impact of the work visibly. Both health care & teaching are having the above said value. I am fortunate to play my role in both the sectors and immensely enjoying the outcome. It is neither an opportunity nor a work but a responsibility.

Eyecare is huge, and I am not even a pinch, but I am humbled to say that, I am able to mark a dot in the right path in the field of eye care through my work and teachings.”

– Udayakumar Balakrishnan