Orbis featured in Meta ad campaign

The campaign features our partnership with FundamentalVR, which we collaborated with to develop a unique tool that uses virtual reality and off-the-shelf hardware to train eye care professionals in under-resourced communities to perform cataract surgery.

Cataracts remain the leading cause of blindness worldwide despite being treatable with a short operation.

Together, we specifically designed the tool with affordability and scalability in mind so that the benefits of cutting-edge VR learning can reach eye care professionals in low- and middle-income countries – home to 90% of people with vision loss.

"Existing cataract training VR simulators were expensive, not transportable, not easily sourced, and trained doctors on a surgical method usually only practiced in high-resource areas, so we saw a real need that we could meet together,” explains Dr. Hunter Cherwek, Orbis’s Vice President of Clinical Services and Technologies.

The Orbis-FundamentalVR simulator, which teaches surgeons how to perform a fundamental cataract surgery that does not require high-cost technologies, has already been deployed in several countries, including Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, and Mongolia.

“Our platform opens a world of possibilities, and we are very proud to collaborate with partners like Orbis that want to revolutionise and globalise surgical training with us,” says Richard Vincent, Co-Founder & CEO of FundamentalVR.

At Orbis, technology and innovation are written into our DNA. We own and manage the world’s foremost ophthalmic telemedicine and e-learning platform, Cybersight, which we launched at the dawn of the internet and have spent two decades developing.

Through our Flying Eye Hospital – which is packed with the latest medical and training equipment and a mobile simulation centre – and our advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), we are using technology to help improve the quality of eye care available in the communities that need it most.

As we celebrate Cybersight’s 20th anniversary, more than 85,000 eye care professionals around the world are registered on the platform, where they access training and education tools, long-distance mentoring, and online courses and lectures anywhere, anytime.

The Meta ad campaign features the wonderful Dr. Renee Badroe, an ophthalmology resident from Jamaica who has participated in Orbis training projects, including a recent Flying Eye Hospital project in Fort Worth, Texas. There she honed her skills using simulation technology under the mentorship of our very own Dr. Maria Montero, Associate Director of Clinical Services, who also features in the Meta campaign.

We would like to say a big thank you to Meta for featuring our work in their campaign, and to all our supporters and funders who make this work possible. Thanks to you, we are getting the latest ophthalmic innovations to the places where it will make the biggest difference.