Orbis Partners and Heidelberg Engineering Partner to Train Eye Care Professionals Around the World

Orbis has announced a new partnership with Heidelberg Engineering, which will fund teaching opportunities and research focused on training eye care professionals around the world via Cybersight—Orbis’s award-winning telemedicine and e-learning platform. It will also fund the charity’s research into retinoblastoma, a rare cancer of the retina most commonly affecting children under the age of 5.

Ninety percent of the 1.1 billion people living with vision loss and blindness reside in low-and middle-income countries. Cybersight is dedicated to providing eye care specialists in these locations with free, virtual access to training, knowledge, and other resources.

Heidelberg Engineering’s contribution to Cybersight will support the delivery of live webinars on topics including optical coherence tomography (OCT). 

In the first half of 2023, Cybersight webinars have reached over 15,000 attendees. The new sessions supported by the Heidelberg Engineering Academy have the potential to equip thousands of ophthalmic professionals worldwide to provide higher quality eye care for their communities.

Heidelberg's funding will also allow Orbis to continue its research project into retinoblastoma, which affects 9,000 children worldwide each year. Ninety-two percent of children diagnosed live in low-and-middle-income countries where late diagnosis, limited accessibility to eye care, and lack of treatment-specific resources contribute to a 40% survival rate within three years of diagnosis. The project, which will also utilizes Cybersight, will investigate the impact of artificial intelligence on worldwide retinoblastoma care. It will also look at how treatment, outcomes, and disease-specific knowledge continues to change over time.

“Orbis is delight­ed to be part­ner­ing with Hei­del­berg Engi­neer­ing. Retinoblas­toma out­comes for chil­dren in low-and-mid­dle income coun­tries could be sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved with ear­li­er diag­no­sis and enhanced treat­ment," said Dr. Hunter Cherwek, vice president, clinical services & technologies at Orbis International. "As a glob­al leader in imag­ing and health care tech­nol­o­gy, Hei­del­berg Engineering’s gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tion and part­ner­ship will mean we can both offer enhanced knowl­edge for eye care prac­ti­tion­ers via Cyber­sight, and pio­neer new research that will help improve out­comes for chil­dren fac­ing retinoblas­toma across the world.”

"Sci­en­tif­ic research and clin­i­cal edu­ca­tion play a large part in fos­ter­ing the diag­nos­tic con­fi­dence that has become syn­ony­mous with our glob­al brand. This new part­ner­ship with Orbis will make valu­able knowl­edge acces­si­ble to thou­sands of eye care pro­fes­sion­als and con­tribute to mean­ing­ful sci­en­tif­ic research that will not only save sight but will save lives," said Arianna Schoess-Vargas, managing director of Heidelberg Engineering.