CLEAR VISION: ME Ph.D. student Jaspal Sandhu hopes that studying the business model for a successful sliding scale eye hospital and medical product manufacturer can help other countries see into a sustainable, independent future.

Interdisciplinary student group prepares for next year’s UN conference

This April will mark the first of many annual Bridging the Divide conferences at Berkeley, put on as a joint effort between the Berkeley Management of Technology program and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). The event will not only offer a forum for exploring accelerated industrial development in emerging countries, but will also fund eight Berkeley student groups to conduct related research and present their findings at next year’s conference.

One such project involves ME Ph.D. student Jaspal Sandhu, who has teamed up with fellow Ph.D. students Mahad Ibrahim (School of Information Management and Systems) and Aman Bhandari (School of Public Health) to conduct a survey of Aravind Eye Care System, a hospital in India that’s flourished despite a compassionate pricing structure and the high price of medical supplies.

“The conference and our project will examine how sustainable technological solutions can free developing countries from their reliance on the West,” says Sandhu.

In 1976, a retired ophthalmologist started an 11-bed eye hospital to provide world class medical attention to anyone who needed it, regardless of cost. Its honor system fee structure required only those who could afford it to pay for their care. With only one-third of patients subsidizing its entire budget, the hospital now conducts 200,000 operations and has 1.4 million outpatient visits annually. Their work is helping cure blindness in a country where many people couldn’t otherwise afford such surgeries, says Sandhu.

In 1992, the hospital’s subsidies from the West in the form of discounted medical supplies dried up. Instead of changing their fees, Aravind decided to manufacture their own corneal lenses, which are used in many of their operations.

The hospital helped start Aurolab, a manufacturing facility that was able to bring down the price of each lens from $100 to $5 without compromising quality.

Aside from supplying Aravind, Aurolab now exports its lenses to 85 countries and has expanded into making eyeglasses, pharmacueticals, and needles for eye surgery. The students want to find out how the hospital created a sustainable architecture and growth without external resources. By abstracting the general principles of this unique success story, the group’s study aims to help other developing countries replicate the business model used by Aravind and Aurolab.

“We want to look at Aurolab's success and the potential replicability of this model for other medical technologies in developing countries,” says Sandhu.

For Sandhu, this project has many draws. It’s an opportunity to work with students from different disciplines and learn a bit of everything, including valuable business analysis skills. The other reason is personal.

“I want to examine the effects of their spiritual, compassionate mission on all aspects of the organization, from design and manufacturing to distribution and delivery,” says Sandhu.

For more information, go to dream.berkeley.edu/aurolab and for more on the conference go to bridge.berkeley.edu.

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