Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grants - Institute/Initiative Community Support

Diabetes is now a leading cause of visual loss and blindness in Canada, affecting 3% of the population. With elevated blood sugars, with time, the small blood vessels in the back of the eye can rupture, allowing blood and fluid to destroy vision. Because small changes in the retina of patients with diabetes can occur without symptoms, regular screening is recommended. Diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy involves a dilated eye examination for intraretinal hemorrhages, microaneurysms, fluid-filled cysts, and the presence of new blood vessels. Additionally, photography and ocular coherence tomography are utilized - an ultrasound-like machine that enables highly detailed imaging of retinal thickness using light rays instead of sound waves. Treatment for diabetic retinopathy now includes eye injections that deliver biologic agents to the back of the eye, laser and eye surgery. Unfortunately, with limited time devoted to teaching about eye disease in the medical curriculum, most medical students and doctors are not comfortable with the screening, diagnosis and treatment of diabetic retinopathy. Our research has shown that the development of multimedia tools that incorporate whiteboard animations can lower study times by 70% and are strongly preferred by medical students. If funded, we plan to create a multimedia medical education model that is aimed at teaching medical students and healthcare practitioners how to screen for, diagnose, and treat diabetes-related eye disease. The content will be distributed through our open-access medical education platform called MEDSKL, which now reaches medical students from 500 universities, and Optocase, a leading education platform that now reaches 22,000+ eye doctors across North America. We have extensive expertise in multimedia medical education, having created over 150 MEDSKL modules and more than 300 videos on Optocase.