Eliminating avoidable blindness: Outreach activities at Aravind Eye Care System

By Sarang Deo, Kamalini Ramdas
London Business School/ Indian School of Business | 2016

Citation

Deo, Sarang., Ramdas, Kamalini. Eliminating avoidable blindness: Outreach activities at Aravind Eye Care System London Business School/ Indian School of Business .

London Business School/ Indian School of Business, 2016

Abstract

This case relates the genesis and evolution of vision centres (VCs) for primary eye care at Aravind Eye Care System (AECS). AECS, based in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, is the world's largest eye care provider. The case is based in 2014, exactly a decade after the first vision centre was opened, and evaluates the role of VCs in Aravind's outreach ecosystem. Community outreach programmes were an integral part of Aravind's model from the start and formed a central part of its vision of taking eye care to the community's doorstep. For many years, community outreach at Aravind was done through eye camps held in remote rural locations. Eye camps had worked extremely well for a long time. However, eye camps were not a perfect solution to Aravind's outreach goals for many reasons. Vision centres evolved as a way to address some of the shortcomings of eye camps, and both these outreach methods were employed in parallel. This case focuses on Aravind's vision centres and how they evolved over a decade, how they compare with the eye camps as a vehicle to attain Aravind's goals, and the opportunities and challenges ahead.

Sarang Deo is a Professor of Operations Management at the Indian School of Business (ISB). He also serves as the Executive Director of the ISB’s Max Institute of Healthcare Management, where he provides strategic leadership for ISB's healthcare initiatives through interdisciplinary research, education, and collaboration.

Professor Deo's research focuses on healthcare delivery systems, examining how operational decisions influence population-level health outcomes. His work spans a wide range of healthcare contexts, including influenza vaccine supply chains and ambulance diversion in the United States, HIV early infant diagnosis networks in sub-Saharan Africa, and formal and informal pathways for tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis and treatment in India. His recent research has focused on designing and evaluating healthcare delivery models, with a particular emphasis on digital health and the integration of artificial intelligence into healthcare systems.

He regularly collaborates with leading global health organisations, including the Gates Foundation, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), and PATH. He currently serves on the World Health Organization's Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Tuberculosis (STAG-TB) and the Working Group for Non-Technical Evaluation under the WHO Global Initiative on AI for Health (GI-AI4H).

Prior to joining ISB, Professor Deo was an Assistant Professor at the Kellogg School of Management. He holds a PhD from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and a BTech from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Before entering academia, he worked as a management consultant with Accenture.

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