A meeting was held in Chennai, India from 2-3 November 2018 to train all personnel involved in the SMART-India study. This study, part of the ORNATE-India funded by UKRI and GCRF, will recruit adults aged 40 years or above residing in homes in pre-defined urban and rural clusters across twelve States and one Union Territory in India. It will evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of non-laboratory based tests to diagnose diabetes and its complications, the clinical and cost-effectiveness of running a multistate telemedicine programme for diabetic retinopathy, estimation of any regional variations of the prevalence of diabetes and diabetic retinopathy, and conduct a process evaluation on the telemedicine programme utilizing non-mydriatic hand-held retinal cameras.

The meeting brought together the lead ophthalmologists and centre administrators from the 20 participating sites, field workers attached to each site, data manager (UK), study manager, representatives from Zeiss, the retinal camera manufacturer, and Prof Sobha Sivaprasad, Project Lead for ORNATE-India, Moorfields Eye Hospital, London.

Over 40 field workers were trained to conduct this house-to-house health survey and to collect data on demography, social, economic, anthropometry, quality of life and life satisfaction. In addition, they were shown how take blood pressure, use point-of-care blood tests (HbA1c, lipids), measure visual acuity and capture retinal photographs using hand held retinal cameras. The data will be entered directly by the field workers into a tablet that is linked to a cloud-based electronic database hosted in India. The data manager in the UK will provide further on-site training at each centre, as well as continuous remote training throughout the study.