Role of AI, global collaboration in ophthalmology's future

Sharon Fekrat, MD, a professor of ophthalmology and neurology at Duke University School of Medicine, highlights the critical importance of networking and collaboration in the medical field, particularly in ophthalmology.

She emphasizes that international meetings are far more than just formal lectures and panels, serving as crucial platforms for building global connections and sparking innovative ideas.

"As a result of these meetings, so many collaborations and projects develop from them," Fekrat said. "One great example is a multicenter retrospective study on endogenous endophthalmitis that now has 8 centers across the United States. We are planning and hoping to incorporate centers from outside the United States. And since organisms vary in different parts of the world and different parts of the country, having the data on endogenous endophthalmitis from multicenters is really important, and can really change the way we think of things."

Fekrat specifically acknowledges Peter Wang, a Duke Medical Student soon to be an ophthalmology resident at the Wilmer Eye Institute, for his pivotal role in this research.

"The future of ophthalmology is bright, and that is a very common saying, because it's bright vision-wise. So many people in ophthalmology and faculty, industry, the collaborations, are very forward thinking and are very innovative and very entrepreneurial. And so really, we would have never predicted to be where we are today, you know, 5 years ago, even," she said.

Fekrat predicts a significant role for artificial intelligence in medical diagnostics and treatment.

"going forward, I think AI is going to be a much larger part, and I envision way down the road that patients will take their smartphone, or equivalent, take a picture of their eye, and all kinds of pictures will result from that. It'll go up to the cloud, a diagnosis will be made, and then they'll be told what site to go to where there's a robot just waiting to do their procedure," she concluded.