The Staffordshire Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Service, a community-based digital eye screening programme is on track to exceed its target of screening over 35,000 diabetes patients this year.
The county-wide scheme screened over 28,000 patients in its first year to March 2007 and now averages 4,000 screenings a month.
Screening clinics are held in 60 optometrist practices across Staffordshire, which grade images using Digital Healthcare's OptoMize iP imaging software and electronic records system.
Optometrist Malcolm Gray, clinical director of the screening service, acknowledged the support and commitment of all the optometrists involved.
Patients for non-urgent follow up are given a choice of six hospitals and Gray said that this boosted their engagement in the screening and treatment process. 'Patients appreciate having the opportunity to select the hospital for their treatment and when they contact us we are also able to explain the next steps in their treatment.'
There are plans to expand delivery of the service. 'The ability to share information via telemedicine is also a key benefit of this innovative software system. A number of our optometrists use a secure broadband connection to submit images for secondary review by optometrists who have received specialist training. We hope to extend our broadband connection so that all of the optometrists involved in the screening service can submit images in this way,' he said.
Jim Lythgow, sales and marketing director at Digital Healthcare, said: 'We congratulate Malcolm Gray and his team, and the optometrists involved, on their substantial achievements over the past 16 months and look forward to continuing to work with them.'