Hyderabad, Sep 23: Telangana IT and Industry Minister KT Rama Rao inaugurated the Poornima and Ramam Atmakuri Technology Centre (P&RMTC) at L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI)’s Gullapalli Pratibha Rao International Centre for Advancement of Rural Eye Care (GPR ICARE), Kismatpur, here on Wednesday.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Rao said that today, 80 percent of medical devices are imported in India, despite the Prime Minister telling us to make it in India, the Chief Minister of Telangana calling for more investments in the state, asking to create more jobs.

“ We in fact set up a very large medical devices park at Sultanpur, it has taken off very well, there are more than 28 companies which took land and are in an advanced stage of completing their project, what I would strongly request is to get all the companies which manufacturing medical devices for ophthalmology, I would be more than happy to create a small cluster in medical devices park and we can give them customized centers, LV Prasad Eye Institute can play a sheet anchor role with bringing them all together, that will go very well with Atma Nirbhar Bharat or Self Reliant India,” the Minister said.

Mr. Rao said, LV Prasad Eye Institute is setting up small clinics in smaller towns including my constituency Sircilla and started looking at the Hub and Spoke model, quite an ambitious initiative. He said that my district will be the first district where there will be no eye care problems in children.

“ Our Chief Minister’s initiative for eyecare is laudable, in fact, three years ago we launched a program which is one of its kind, probably the biggest in the world called as Kanti Velugu, a screening camp for every citizen in Telangana and what he intended was to start building records of each and every citizen, be it eye care or ENT problem or other problems with the intention of creating Digital Health Profile of the entire state, in that direction we made a right beginning.

I am delighted that your electronic medical records crossed 1 crore, compliments to you for being ahead of us, but I want you to join us in our effort also and connect those to our records to build up the further database,” he added.

Ramam Atmakuri, Executive Vice-Chair, LVPEI, said, “ Our Engineering team here is going to bring out some unique and great products from this center, what’s unique about this Institute is we have, Ophthalmologist, Engineers, Optometrists all under one roof, the people who conceptualise those things and build them.”

“We are putting such products to use in our clinics and taking them to the market. We have several such products in the pipeline and will be in the market in the next couple of years, the institute is doing some path-breaking work and the products will be in the market”, he added. (UNI)