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Medhya Gupta
Q1. It is amazing to know that you have more than 25 years of clinical experience in
Optometry and more than a decade of dedicated optometry teaching.
What attracted you to the field of optometry, and what do you enjoy the most?
Ans: Optometry is a field for somebody who can understand and analyze the concept and apply it for betterment of human beings. I realize there is enough possibilities and
scope in it to improve a person`s ability to see clearly. Eyes are one of the most important parts of the body. If you observe all the messages which goes to the cognitive
brain from all the sensory organs, Eye provide more than 80% of information about
our surrounding before we smell, touch, feel or taste it. In other words, anything we
do is majorly guided by our eyes. In our life what we see through our eyes it guides
what we perceive at our brain and what we perceive it guides our thoughts and action,
Hence it provides right direction to life. If a person is focused, he can do a lot in field of
Optometry, I decided to join field of Optometry because I was passionate about beauty and mystery of
eye and its ample capacity to provide direction to life which I consider most important before
we start moving in that direction and latter identify that we moved in wrong direction,
I am very passionate about teaching and learning, I share my experience and clarity of
vision with all my students try to remove their confusion and improve clarity. For
example when we discuss and implement way to improve teaching system and improve
conceptual clarity in our students.
We realize a topper is somebody who excel in hiding his knowledge from other, which
limits his growth of knowledge by not getting any external inputs on the other hand his hard
work and expertise fail to inspire outer because no body knows his hard work and expertise.
I suggest a topper or fast learner should be made part of a team where he share his
knowledge to improve performance of team by team work. In this way he can make
significant impact in field of knowledge and learn how to work in a team and built a whole
team which excels.
On the other hand back-benchers or slow learners, are very good team players they enjoy
failure because they have never tasted fun of achieving things in their life. We need to explain
them nicely, they can excel by conceptual clarity and guided hard work. So, when I talk about fast learners, I teach them how to work in a team and improve as a whole team which matters more in life then short-term unstable illusion in life. When I talk about slow learners, I try to teach them to enjoy learning and excelling in their field and
therefore at Galgotias University in teaching as well as in our clinical practice we follow a
customized method of teaching for getting highest possible level of achievement for each one
of them and try to make them a responsible member of Society.
The most important part of Optometry which I personally enjoy the most is that it is based on
experiential component of learning because you deal with various ocular problems of
different human being. Each and every human and his problems are unique we continuously
learn to understand that specific persons problem and try to find best possible solution of that.
World wide I see there is ample scope and demand of person who are expert in finding out
solution to these problems specially when there are enough advancements taking place which
can identify problems at very budding stage and provide solution to these at pre clinical stage.
at Global Genesis School
of students, staff and differently abled students
Health Sciences at Chitkara University Punjab in Conference
Q2. Talking about your achievements, can you share the major output of your WHO research project?
Ans: WHO, i.e., World Health Organization, is involved in planning and guiding health care activities worldwide.
In the field of Optometry and eye care, they are mainly concerned about removing all possible treatable blindness. A big chunk of these treatable blindness around more than 70% is caused by Cataracts in India. Most developing countries have a large number of this chunk. Therefore WHO`s mission of vision for all by 2020 funded Cataract eradication program in India and other developing countries. This project started in 1990, their target was to achieve its goal by 2020. So, Within, these thirty years, they want to evaluate how much the Cataract is reduced and what pace and strategies they should follow to achieve success in reducing all possible treatable blindness to as low as 0.3% in 2020.
AIIMS worked in this project of WHO which was trying to assess the effectiveness of that program in middle of that project we have to measure statistics of Cataract in average sampling population of India. It was identified that Bharatpur represents average district size with average population density of Cataract in North India. Approximately forty villages in Bharatpur, were identified for doing population survey. We were members of survey team from AIIMS, we are assigned the task to visit all these forty villages organize eye and health camp, we examined 90% of the statistical population above 60 yrs. according to electoral roll because they were major suspect for Cataract. We provided all primary eye care facilities at times general health care facilities at remote places. We evaluated cataract surgery done and their outcome we referred all those who are left out to go to the cataract camp base camp and
get it removed.
Some activities shifted to high hill areas in Rajasthan, desert areas, and the different
challenging areas. We identified them according to electoral roll and approached almost all of
them whom we can trace.
Similarly we interact with patients in various age groups and languages. Many patients were
around eighty years old or eighty-five-year-old. We even found a patient of hundred year
age too.
Similar data was received from other hospital groups in central and south India for example
LVPI, Arvind hospital etc. It was identified that data provided by team AIIMS has highest
coverage and is most reliable. So, they appreciated our work, and they further delegated
more area work to AIIMS. So, it was a lovely experience to reach the remotest people serve
them at that place and help them to get it relieved, as well as get almost the highest level of
coverage in survey we did in India.
Q3. What are the most significant challenges or concerns of optometry today?
Ans: I always see Challenges are possible opportunities of future. They give us direction for
possible growth opportunities. The most critical challenge is that a person has to be
very clear about his goal in Optometry which is purely a skill development course for
Eye care professionals. In my opinion most significant challenges in the field of
Optometry is to know all skill required with perfection. For example, they should
have perfection in
Refraction work
Prescribing glasses and Contact lenses.
Clinical examinations both preliminary and recent advancements
Primary eye care and its management
First aids and diagnosis and management of Ocular emergencies
Early diagnosis and management of visual alignment errors like squint
Early diagnosis and management of suppression and Amblyopia
We should be very strongly clear about our work, and we should be perfect in that.
By virtue of our profession of Optometry we are authorized to start our own clinic and do it at
an entrepreneur level that gives us great opportunity to serve our society. We are taught how
to serve society, we should try to help people in remote areas. I should organize eye care,
remote visual canters and Health Central camps, and we should have a visiting hour. So those
people who don’t get services in remote places can be provided. The role of Optometry
according to government is that we should serve every person in society. So, first and
foremost, a challenge that we should perfect in our profession second is what we should serve
the community. In this way, we should serve selflessly.
Q4. How do you balance the department’s competing research, teaching, and clinical
care demands?
Ans: In my opinion all this competition, Research, Teaching and Clinical care demands are one and same thing in a sense that if we are ahead of ourselves from all our previous moments we can have competitive advantage, our knowledge is research for others, we do a better teaching and we provide latest clinical care to our patient. Hence being ahead in technology is key to all these “I see technology as a great tool which bring new and advance challenges
to intellectuals actually help us to do tough complicated task more accurately and faster.
Technology help us in research. They help us do work faster and more accurately; they help
us to perform our activity to the highest possible level, so we should be technology friendly
and learn technology. And we should implement the use of this technology in our profession.
Like when I see this technology in optometry, I realize there is a big gap where people need
to start using technology and researching optometry. When I talk about Ophthalmologist,
Eye surgeon , I realize they knew how todo surgery and prescribe medication. But there is a
clear gap between those who make instruments(Medical engineering technologist) and those
who use these tools(Medical, Paramedical and Allied healthcare professionals), and they tell
what is required for doing better health car. A team work between these two can help to
improve health care industry. So, I see Optometrist, can play a vital role in bridging that
knowledge gap.we can identify the output of those results and then tell how we can improve
this issue.
For example: Retinoscopy, which costs around thirty thousand. That retinoscopy tells us the
value of refractive errors inside the eyes to examiner only. An Auto refractor can be made by
using Artificial Intelligence now anybody who knows how to guide a patient can find
refractive error easily and fastly and in certain conditions more accurately. So we realized
that technology that makes it very, very inconvenient to anybody who can use it and that
technology could be sold at the cost of 4 Lakhs. So, you can see the technology has made a
product of thirty thousand to four lakh,
This is one example; there are many more instruments; if we can do data analysis of these
instruments using AI technology and provide an easy to a patient, like if we shift this
technology to mobile and give it in the hand of any person at home. They can take a picture
of eye based on analysis by AI they can reasonably accurate diagnosis, and solution to their
problem, and that would be a great revolution. Every person can see the advantage of this
technology. Once they get proper guidance on their mobile.
Q5. How do you stay current on the latest optometry developments and
incorporate them into the department’spractices and protocols?
Ans: Everything needs effort, but we must update ourselves. Sometimes, we used to get
latest updates from a conference at Galgotias University. We take part in it,
and sometimes we watch YouTube videos.
Sometimes, you are involved in specific projects. In that case, we approach our co-guides
like Co research principal investigators. We discuss, and we finalize how we can improve,
like if we do some project that is a learning experience for us and improving ourselves.So,
when we talk about research updating, we need to work on it.
Still, it is an excellent and inspiring learning experience. So, we work with good research
team for that.
Q6. Could you describe any initiatives or projects the departmentis currently working
on and how you envision benefiting patients and the broader optometry community?
Ans: Our optometry department has a Center for excellence; Centre for excellence means
a department involved in providing services toour university and society. So, the Centre of
Excellence has the capacity, infrastructure, know-how, and person who has these
capacities. So, this can provide services to anybody in society.
One of the learning platforms we created, we continuously give a lecture on how to prescribe
glasses. And that was for anybody, and it was an online 50-lecture series; We provided one
hour lecture on various topics every day, and it was more than fifty days. And we had more
than a hundred participants in that course. There were many opticians; there were many
optometrists; there were many bachelor and masters students. Students who allparticipated
were local, national and international. In this, we explain how to do Primary eye care. We
must explained various step of many examination and how we can filter out errors.
Discussed in detail about wrong actions and explained how to improve our skills and
capacity to find the right prescription glasses.
Similarly, our department has done three projects,
One of those is identifying various possibilities of systematic diseases and physiological eye
conditions by identifying the pictures of the vascular supply and layers of retina of eye. In
this, we take out the picture of the retina and correlate it with different situations based on
those co-relations. Preclinical and Clinical condition of various systemic diseased can be
identified. We organized it so that Based on those pictures, we can find out that this condition
of retinal picture could lead to diabetic retinopathy in 10 years. So, these three clinical
assessments are really need of the hour. It helps in identification of disease in preclinical
condition and future can be saved and made healthier.. Our government also wants, we
should identify most diseases early so that we can do many things for society and make them
healthy and make more people healthy instead of more people with illnesses in the curative
stage.
Similarly, we did a preclinical assessment of the neurological and physiological conditionof
the eye by identifying different layers of the tear film using the ocular surface analyser. We
recommended specific Improvements in the optical surface analyser, which could make it
more effective for the Indian population.
Findings of two of our projects we applied in Smart India Hackathon.
A hackathon is a smart India Hackathon where the government Ask us to provide asolution
to a problem. And in that Hackathon, we offered these software applications on a mobile,
and we asked them if this application software could be provided to anybody at home. As I
say,he is the remotest person in India and can take a picture. You can getthe right advice, and
he can write and get his suggestions and go and get it verified for further treatment or follow,
like if he knows about his condition. He can preplan and prevent himself from getting the
disease to that condition. What could be after ten years? So, we focusmore on identifying
most clinical needs by taking pictures and not doing invasive procedures.
Patients are generally resistant to invasive procedures in which punching and taking out
blood and all the parameters because that is more painful and time-consuming, but simply
taking the picture is not costly. It is more comfortable and suggestive of findings Than these
small tests where we need to face many difficulties. So, we do all these projects here at
Galgotias University.
Our student’s Masters, PhD even Bachelor’s students who are in their final year are doing this
and are involved in that, and we have filed around 18 patents. Last year we filed three
projects in prevaricates two years, and we are still in many other activities.
Q7. In today’s time, where spectacles have become more of a style rather than needful
commodity, what are your views on this change? Are there any optical-related myths
that you think are ridiculous in today’s time?
Ans: I appreciate the modernization and fashion icon spectacles that use both. The first thing
you look at anybody’s face is his face and eyes, so if you have spectacles, that adds a look to
that face. So, there is a word called if you want to highlight something; if you want to hide
something, spectacles are the best thing you can add to your faceand enhances capacity and
value. The fashion industry is doing a great job in this. Still, I think the fashion industry
should always havea clinical and a look aspect. The clinical part means certain conditions
will be realized that electronic gadgets produce glare on the eyes if we have specific glare resistant or glare-proof lenses. So, the fashion industry has recognized this and is doing excellent work in this area.
As we know, if a small child continuously works on mobile, he can harm his retina and
specific conditions; we realize we get age-relatedmacular degeneration at a very early stage
of six years. So, wheneverthey are making these icons, they should add quality products
inside that fashion statement. That could lead to more comfortable, and that could move to
the removal of all the damages caused by electronic gadgets. So, this is a perfect thing. They
should also be added with clinical stages, I see a good future in this join together with
fashion in optometry.
Q8. Is there anything else you would like to share about yourvision for the
department or your philosophy as a leader in optometry?
Ans. Vision and philosophy are huge terms to describe. Still, Galgotias University is doing
excellent work, and they have developed a multidisciplinary approach towards uplift learned
students and trying to make them self-capable. I realized the vision of Optometry at
Galgotias University is to make them very good personality people and to add more, they
should know how to deal with all the variable disciplines like artificial intelligence and
clinical research like an ocular pharmacy. Like these things they are given an opportunity to
learn all these things together here at Galgotias University. In my opinion all these things are
crucial and it is most essential to understand the impact of these. It is Not only about the
knowledge, but application of the ability which matters to every person in a society like if a
student learns how to apply the knowledgegained here in Optometry in Bachelor, master,
PhD. It would also be the best thing that they could remember from here if they knew how to
use whatever knowledge they had for the betterment of their clinic and the betterment of
society, and Galgotias University is committedto that. Therefore, I follow the mission and
vision of the university. The teamwork they’re doing is making them better and will
significantly contribute to their success in Optometry.
Free eye camp at Dr Sampath Eye Hospital
in association with Indian Optometry Association
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