There is an unusual detail at the centre of Sandhya Atre’s life: she was born in Ward 19 of Government Medical College Hospital, Nagpur. Her parents — both GMC Nagpur alumni from the third batch — were classmates. Her mother obtained two MDs, the second in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, while her father looked after the children in Akola. The college was, in a sense, her origin story before she even enrolled in it.
She would go on to leave ophthalmology behind in Canada, retrain entirely in health information management, and build a second career from data and technology in a country that offered her no straightforward path. Opportunity, she would later say, was the key word that shaped her life. It would be more accurate to say that she shaped herself around it.
A Childhood Between Schools
Sandhya was born in Nagpur and went to Mount Carmel School (Classes 1–4), then Somalwar Higher Secondary School (Classes 5–11). Her premedical year was at Radhakisan Laxminarayan Toshniwal (RLT) College, Akola. In 1973, she entered Government Medical College, Nagpur — the same institution where she had been born.
During her graduation years, she was part of a circle of friendships that included the classmates she found natural and sustaining. The GMC community she grew up inside — her parents’ classmates now her teachers — gave her an unusual vantage point on the institution. She understood it from the inside out.
After graduation, she completed her Diploma in Ophthalmology at GMC Nagpur and then left for Bengaluru, where she worked with Dr. Ram Narayan Rao.
Five Countries, One Career That Kept Changing
Sandhya’s husband Narendra — an ME in Mechanical Engineering from VNIT, Nagpur, who later obtained a postgraduate qualification in Plastics and Rubber Technology in the UK — drew her into the life of an internationally mobile engineer’s family. When Narendra left for Italy for further training, Sandhya went with him. She found work with Dr. Forlani, a well-known ophthalmologist in Rimini. The work was in Italian. She managed.
The next posting was Ghana. There, she built an ophthalmology department for the police hospital from the ground up, served as an honorary consultant to foreign consulates, and worked with WHO and UN organisations. She developed a skill she would rely on throughout her career: the ability to read a new culture, adapt to it, and function within it before it had quite finished explaining itself to her.
When the children’s education demanded stability, the Atres returned to Pune. Sandhya took a position at Symbiosis Health Centre, where, alongside her clinical work, she began to examine what computers could do in a healthcare setting. This was the late 1990s. The answer was: quite a lot, and she was paying attention.
The Turn Toward Data
When the family decided to move to Canada, Sandhya assessed the situation clearly. The Canadian licensing pathway for a foreign-trained ophthalmologist was long and uncertain. Retrain as an optometrist? The idea did not appeal. But the intersection of medicine, law, and information technology — the emerging field of Health Information Management — was something she could enter with what she already knew and what she had been quietly learning at Symbiosis.
She brushed up her mathematics, studied data management, acquired knowledge of legal medicine, and qualified as a Health Information Management professional. The transition was complete, the new career functional. “I am enjoying the new profession,” she said. “And a spin-off is that I can work from home in a world of snow and cold.”
The observation is characteristically dry, and also accurate. Sandhya Atre was trained as an ophthalmologist, practised in three countries, crossed into a data-driven field mid-career, and retired from it in Ontario with her bucket list being steadily reduced.
Nandu, and the Music
Narendra, her husband — Nandu, as he is known — retired alongside her. He sings, plays music, and now teaches, both in person and online. Their daughters, Shruti and Dhanashree, both work as software engineers at Apple in Cupertino, California. Shruti’s husband works at Apple; Dhanashree’s husband works at Google. The next generation has migrated further still, and is doing well.
Writing in recent years, Sandhya described the post-retirement phase with a lightness that feels earned: “Family and friends take centre stage, and we are checking off our bucket list by exploring beautiful places and soaking in nature’s wonders.”
She was born in Ward 19 of the hospital where her parents had studied and fallen in love with medicine. She retired in a Toronto suburb, having practised on four continents, mastered two careers, and outlasted every city she ever lived in.