Clinic Data

As one of the largest organizations that provides direct delivery service of eye care in low and middle income countries, VOSH Chapters have the potential to make a significant contribution to alleviating the global burden of blindness and visual impairment by simply recording our data.

As direct delivery providers, we have the benefit of seeing many people from different communities around the world and we can easily incorporate surveys as part of our mission that can help with epidemiological studies in identifying the visual needs of a specific community.

VOSH projects can be an invaluable source of information for determining the prevalence of eye diseases and blindness from URE and an excellent way to rapidly assess the state of eye care in an underserved area. These projects can identify which communities are most in need and which communities are more likely to pay for eyeglasses and eye care. Different levels of poverty and accessibility require different types of approach to best alleviate the burden of uncorrected refractive error.

Our data can be an invaluable tool for advocacy groups like the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, Eyelliance, and our local partner organizations with whom VOSH is working to bring the issue of global blindness to the forefront, so that it can be recognized as a public health concern to the same degree as malaria and river blindness is today.

V/I has developed a universal patient form to be used by all chapters during their clinics as an invaluable way to capture optometric mission data to enhance the global fight against uncorrected refractive error & preventable ocular disease.

We will share this data with you and you can use it collected to anticipate the type of eye care issues will be treating, and apply for your own funding as well. This data will also be shared with national organizations, such as IAPB, WCO, to improve global humanitarian eye care delivery.

TO MAKE IT EASIER FOR YOU to help us collect data, we have developed two different options to assist in sending in your patient data.

The first form (Summary Clinic Form) is a simple form that allows online completion of basic demographic data, a file attachment, or both.  Upon completion, this form is automatically submitted to VOSH International (V/I).  The second form (Patient Intake Form) is more complex but is appropriate if you wish to analyze the data thoroughly, and perhaps even publish results.  If desired, the Patient Intake Form can serve as the data collection form for your clinic. However, for V/I purposes, we would prefer that you use the Summary Clinic Form.

Please start using one of these patient forms on your next mission trip.