Celebrating 20 years of Cybersight

Through Cybersight, medical professionals around the world can access training and education tools, long-distance mentoring, and online courses and lectures anywhere, anytime – from a laptop, tablet, or mobile phone. Plus, our team of 400 world-leading Volunteer Faculty can deliver training and consultations without having to leave their home.

The Cybersight app is now available on Apple and Android devices. One of its most important features is its offline functionality, critical for eye teams working in areas with poor or no internet connection. A user can create, view, or work on a case from anywhere in the world, and the app will automatically sync when the user next connects to the internet.

As smartphones become ubiquitous, even in remote communities, providing a better user experience through the Cybersight app will help improve the quality of eye care available in hard-to-reach places.

In addition to offline functionality, mobile apps provide a more streamlined user experience than website browsers because apps allow data to be stored locally on devices, ensuring a quicker experience.

Through the Cybersight app, local eye teams can seek expert guidance from Orbis Volunteer Faculty, take online courses, join webinars, access thousands of teaching cases, work offline, and even use artificial intelligence to detect signs of common eye diseases such as diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and macular diseases in their patients.

In 1998, decades ahead of his time, Dr. Eugene Helveston, then part of Orbis Volunteer Faculty, created the first-ever internet-based ophthalmic telemedicine program. In 2003, Cybersight officially launched, paving the way for landmark changes in ophthalmic education.

During Orbis visits to Havana, Cuba, Dr. Helveston realized that in-person training projects weren’t enough; committed local doctors needed ongoing support. Having already experimented with remote consultations, he along with Orbis team members, set about training local colleagues with digital imagery and clinical history recording.

This would allow them to email cases to Dr. Helveston at his home in Indianapolis. From there he could send back, via email, a diagnosis, or recommendation for further tests and re-submission, or a suggested treatment plan. In doing so, Orbis’s first ophthalmic telemedicine system was born.

Today, Cybersight has more than 85,000 registered users hailing from nearly every country and region in the world. It has delivered more than 30,000 patient consultations, helping diagnose and treat patients from all corners of the world, even reaching conflict-affected areas like Ukraine and Syria.

As the COVID pandemic unfolded, thanks to our early investment in telemedicine, we were ready to meet the needs of eye care professionals throughout the world – virtually.

In the past four years, the number of users has exploded. There have been more than 119,000 webinar attendances, over 246,000 course enrollments, and Cybersight videos have been viewed more than 11 million times. Using Cybersight, we also seamlessly transitioned our in-person Flying Eye Hospital projects to virtual ones throughout 2020, 2021, and 2022.

This year, at the annual Orbis International gala on October 19 in New York City, Orbis will recognize the contribution of Dr. Gene Helveston to global eye care. To further honor Dr. Helveston, Orbis International has a campaign to raise $200,000 which will establish the annual Dr. Helveston Pediatric Conference on Cybersight. This conference will bring together the foremost minds in pediatric ophthalmology, so that eye care teams around the world can expand their knowledge and deliver better care to their youngest patients.