Post by Tinglong Dai

Ophthalmology AI is the crown jewel of medical AI. It's the first medical specialty with an FDA-cleared autonomous AI. It has real-world evidence for safety, effectiveness, and productivity improvement. It continues to lead medical AI as we strive toward agentic AI solutions. It's a specialty with heroes who make things happen. Last week's "Eye on AI" workshop at The Johns Hopkins University - Carey Business School, which Dr. Kathy McDonald and I co-chaired, was a celebration of the heroes of the field and an action-packed day of discussions about what's coming, what's scalable, and how to deliver broader health and healthcare advances across the world. Achieving Global Advances in Medical AI was what we had in mind. We had heroes including the father of autonomous AI in ophthalmology, Dr. Michael Abramoff, and the pioneering innovator Dr. Pearse Keane, whose foundational work on foundation models has opened the door to so many things and made the field a truly exciting arena, with the promise of fundamentally transforming the specialty and truly delivering on the idea that eyes are the windows into health. We had innovative AI regulators like Dr. Michelle Tarver, MD, PhD, who leads the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health and came back to Hopkins where she earned her MD/PhD. We had Dr. Charlotte J. Haug, MD, PhD, MSc, who has fostered the development of the space of medical AI through her editorial leadership at NEJM Group and NEJM AI, and who gave us what I think is the North Star: if AI can just reduce the errors we already make, it has done a lot. We had our proud Hopkins graduate Dr. Gudmund Hernes, former Norwegian Minister of Health, whose touching and thrilling account of punch cards jamming at Hopkins in 1967 and sweeping narrative from Herbert Simon to the present left the room spellbound. And our wonderful colleagues: Dr. Risa Wolf, who through her series of seminal work at Hopkins showed 100% AI screening completion versus 22% in usual care. Dr. T. Y. Alvin Liu, M.D., who mapped $380 million in VC flowing into ophthalmic AI. Dr. Roomasa Channa, who reminded us that AI is just fancy technology unless we ensure follow-up. Dr. Kelly Therese Gleason, who reframed medical AI by showing nurses generate 600 to 800 data points per shift. And Drs. Guodong (Gordon) Gao, Ayse Gurses, and Nancy Reynolds, who joined our international keynotes on a closing panel moderated by Kathy. What an exciting day. What an exciting agenda. So much more to come. Grateful to Rinika Putatunda, MBA, Dawnn Wienecke, J. Ashton Ray, Ashton Nicolas, and Alex Kowalewski for coordinating logistics. And to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Distinguished Professorships Program office, The Johns Hopkins University - Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Hopkins Business of Health Initiative (HBHI), and DSAI for all the support. Eye on AI. We're seeing the future a bit more clearly!