The huge leap made by information technology over the past 30 years has created unimaginable opportunities in the past.
The year 2000 brought a huge leap in OFTAPRO from a professional point of view.
That year, the first e-consulting programme was initiated, with the help of Professor Eugene M. Helveston from the United States of America, from Indiana University. In the following years, the doctors at Oftapro were active partners in the Cyber-Sight Telemedicine programme, which is still under development and currently involves tens of thousands of professional partners. The programme facilitated in addition to obtaining a second opinion in the case of extremely difficult cases from the best specialists in the field, the participation in a programme of high-level life-long medical education of the doctors from OFTAPRO by means of a permanent contact with American and international ophthalmology.
Subsequently, some physicians in turn became mentors in strabismus and paediatric ophthalmology in this programme for younger ophthalmologists in a multitude of countries.
Even today, difficult cases can benefit from OFTAPRO e-consulting where necessary, but these situations have become rarer due to the increase in the expertise of doctors at Oftapro.
However, there are still extremely difficult cases in which we ask the opinion of fellow specialists from abroad, especially in case of eye tumours, severe corneal diseases or neuro-ophthalmology, especially in situations where specialists in that field are missing in Romania.
The last years have brought us in unforeseen situations, during the Covid period, the technology saving us through the remote assistance that we could provide in certain situations to patients.
Currently, in order to provide specialized care to as many patients as possible, MD Dan Georgescu, who lives and works in the United States, provides online consultations, with the help of MD Mihnea Vulpe, in real time, benefiting from all the facilities that our high-performance database software and technology offer us.
MD Georgescu can see the patient, talk to him/her, examine his/her investigations and evaluate the result of the investigations performed by the doctor in the practice during the periods when he/she is not present in the OFTAPRO Clinic. These things are possible only with the consent of the patient respecting all the rules in force.