There are around 55 million visually impaired people in India, up to 80% of whom could be helped by everyday procedures like Lasik. Medical and surgical resources, however, are limited. In April 2015, nonprofit L V Prasad Eye Institute, in Hyderabad, India, teamed up with Microsoft India to create Connected Eyes, a cloud-based machine-learning research project that uses data from tens of thousands of eye patients to identify the likelihood of success for new surgery, plus a probable regression rate, so that doctors can deploy those resources most effectively. Last December, Connected Eyes linked up with institutions in Brazil, Australia, and the United States to create the Microsoft Intelligent Network for Eyecare, which will build a universally available service that offers eye doctors immediate predictions for their patients. "This will be a global pool of knowledge that everyone can benefit from," says Anil Bhansali, managing director of Microsoft India R&D.

Joseph Sirosh, Corporate Vice President of the Data Group at Microsoft, offers a surprising story about how machine learning, population data, and the cloud are coming together to reimagine eye care in India.