The Offerings and Limitations of Digital Health Care in Ophthalmology

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, retina specialists had limited experience with artificial intelligence (AI) and digital health care, which can include services such as telemedicine. Interactions with AI in retina were perceived as something—although feasible—best kept for future implementation. Digital health care was a vague term, pregnant with promise but lacking a clear use case for daily patient interactions. However, over the past 2 years, retina specialists and their patients have learned how AI may be a tool physicians can use to monitor patients for disease progression, how telemedicine might mean more than a mere video chat between patient and clinician, and how the tools of the 21st century were closer to real-world practice than anticipated.