Telemedicine startup Drishti Eye Care raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Lok Capital yesterday. Launched in December 2011, Drishti offers primary and secondary eye care services including screening for refractive errors, cataract, retinal complaints, glaucoma and treatment of eye conditions like diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and uveitis among others in underserved geographies. Medianama spoke with Drishti founder Kiran Anandampillai about the organization's plans to provide eye care services in villages and challenges that it encounters. Here are some excerpts from the interview: On choosing underserved geographies: Anandampillai said that they chose underserved geographies to offer eye care services, since these regions lack opthalmologists and opthalmology facilities unlike urban areas. On the company's strategy: Anandampillai stated that Drishti currently works on three different models - building and managing a secondary care hospital in each district, telemedicine vision centers in small towns and eye camps in villages. He stated that the secondary care hospital and the eye camps are completely managed by them while they partner with general physicians to set up telemedicine vision centers in small towns. Anandampillai mentioned that they are currently piloting this model in Karnataka's Devanahalli district, where the company has built a secondary care facility in Devanahalli and telemedicine vision centers in Bagepalli and Vijaypura towns. He claimed that they are also covering around 10 villages every month through their eye camps. On Keeping Doctor Patient Trust: Anandampillai claimed that unlike other telemedicine facilities where patients interact remotely with doctors, Drishti tries to maintain the patient-doctor trust…
