Dr Grayson Armstrong Highlights How Ophthalmologists Are Early Adopters of Innovation

Ophthalmology is image heavy, which has made the specialty amenable to telemedicine and the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI), said Grayson Armstrong, MD, medical director, ophthalmic emergency services at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, and instructor in ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School.

Transcript

You'll be presenting on telemedicine and artificial intelligence for eye care at the AAO meeting. What are some of the key points you'll be talking about?

I'm incredibly excited to be talking about telemedicine and AI this upcoming AAO meeting. Ophthalmology as a specialty is incredibly amenable to telemedicine and AI implementation. We're an incredibly imaging heavy specialty. We have a lot of images and a lot of data that makes this possible. We're always on the cutting edge of technology. And we're, in many ways, the early adopters across all of medicine, in both pharma, technology, innovation, AI.

A few of the talks that I'll be speaking at—the first is called “Innovations in Telemedicine and AI From Around the World,” where I'll be on a panel with Michael Chiang, MD, the director of the National Eye Institute, and also Daniel Shu Wei Ting from the National University of Singapore, where we're talking about how to implement new technologies and AI in the clinics with your patients. This is mainly for young ophthalmologists, but anyone can attend. It's talking about where we currently stand as a field, where we're going, and how to use this in your day-to-day practice.

We're also talking about integration of AI tech and patient care, broadly. And the last session is called “Optimizing Telemedicine and AI for Both International and Domestic Use.” This is going to be during the 11:30 to 12:45 pm session on Sunday. This coincides with the Parker Health Lecture, where Jim Madara, MD, who's the CEO of the American Medical Association, is also talking about technology for patient care. I think it's going to be pretty innovating to hear how someone in charge of an organization as big as the AMA is thinking about these things, and how it can be applied to the field of ophthalmology.