Equipping your clinic with the latest AI tools can be beneficial to you, your patients and your staff.
It’s 5:00 PM. You’ve just finished your last patient. You have dinner plans with your family, and if you don’t leave in the next five minutes, you’ll be late. But of course, you still haven’t finished ten patient notes, three referral letters and you need to order a scleral lens. By the time you walk through the door at home, you realize there’s also a stack of unread work emails, several missed patient messages because your staff was swamped and you vaguely remember someone asking for the day off tomorrow. Coverage still hasn’t been arranged.
Most of us can relate to this scenario: phones ringing nonstop while staff juggle multiple tasks, appointment recalls falling through the cracks and vision plan billing running weeks behind. In the exam room, we rush all day to stay on schedule, only to face a mountain of charts, glaucoma scans to interpret and referral letters to complete before starting the next day’s pre-charting. Many of us wish we could walk into each exam already equipped with trends, red flags and key decision points for every patient. However, without support, the work means staying late or pushing tasks to the next day… and the next. How much time could we reclaim if even a handful of these tasks were automated?
These everyday frustrations are exactly where AI can help. Now imagine a clinic where charts are essentially complete as the patient walks out, routine emails are automatically triaged, phone workload is dramatically reduced and your staff operates efficiently – even when short-handed. You feel less burnt out, and patients receive faster, more personalized care. This once-distant idea is rapidly becoming reality in the AI-supported optometry clinic.
AI Beyond a Search Engine
Many clinicians still see AI as a more sophisticated version of Google, useful mainly for quick questions or generating images. In reality, its potential extends much further. Modern tools can lighten administrative burdens, support clinical decision-making and significantly enhance the patient experience. AI can answer phone calls, assist with charting, write letters and simplify billing. Clinically, it can analyze images, prepare summary reports, flag concerning findings, assist with differential diagnoses and shorten the time required to prepare glaucoma or retina reports.
AI can also support customized patient care. Intelligent agents can triage concerns, review prior chart data, cross-reference medications and create tailored care plans within minutes. This improves efficiency while elevating the thoroughness of every encounter.
Where Should a Practice Start?
The easiest way to begin is simply to experiment. Start small by exploring ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini for low-risk tasks. These tools can help brainstorm differential diagnoses (similar to a curated Google search without sorting through ten websites), draft an employee handbook, or generate ideas for your holiday party and office incentives.
If you’re hesitant about relying on large general models for medical accuracy, tools such as OpenEvidence and PubMedAI reference published medical literature and can be safer for clinical fact-checking.
Next, consider optometry-specific AI assistants. Tools like OptoAI and Oculogyx claim to be trained on optometry and ophthalmology resources. While AI should not make final clinical decisions, these narrower models can be helpful for optical calculations, ICD-10 coding, medication cross-referencing and offering treatment recommendations in line with standard care.
Some practices even build their own custom AI agents using paid versions of ChatGPT. You can upload your employee handbook or internal protocols so your staff can direct their questions to the clinic-specific AI instead of a manager – freeing up time for everyone.
Reducing Administrative Burden
Once you’re comfortable with the basics, you can explore tools that reduce staff workload. RingIQ, for example, acts as an AI receptionist for optometry practices. It can book appointments, reschedule visits and manage after-hours calls while integrating with EHR systems. Freeing staff from constant phone duty allows them to be more present with patients and improves the optical experience.
If you enjoy tinkering, the Power Hour Optometry Podcast offers guides on creating a simple voice agent using Vapi.ai and N8N.ai. Although not as robust as fully developed systems, this DIY solution can automate recall calls and basic scheduling.
If you’re not ready for a complete AI phone system, several companies offer a hybrid approach. MyBusinessCareTeam (MyBCAT) uses live virtual assistants during the day and an AI agent after hours. Another tool, Emitrr, provides automated reminders, scheduling and patient communication with AI-supported features. Even partial automation can significantly ease the front-desk workload.
AI in the Exam Room
The race is on for AI scribes, something many clinicians have long wished for. Companies like Doctora.ai, FreedAI, Oculogyx.ai and Barti offer real-time scribing that records the visit and generates a SOAP note. Currently, Doctora.ai integrates with RevolutionEHR, Oculogyx.ai integrates with PegasusEHR and Barti includes an internal AI scribe. Most major EHR systems are also developing native AI scribe features.
On the imaging side, tools such as Altris AI (currently research-only) and Topcon’s upcoming AI platform aim to simplify image interpretation. Topcon recently acquired Iris (for cloud-based diabetic retinopathy screening) and Toku (for retinal biomarkers related to cardiovascular risk, biological aging and kidney disease). AI won’t replace the optometrist’s judgment, but it can highlight subtle patterns across thousands of images, enabling earlier detection of concerning findings.
After the exam, many ODs already use HIPAA-compliant AI tools to summarize visit notes and draft referral letters, saving several minutes per patient.
Enhancing Personalization and Long-Term Management
AI tools can significantly improve personalized care plans. For example, Treehouse Eyes developed a proprietary tool that generates evidence-based myopia management recommendations based on a child’s age, refractive error, family history and lifestyle factors, drawing from hundreds of studies.
For glaucoma, AI tools can analyze patterns in large datasets to estimate progression risk and help clinicians plan follow-up intervals or guide treatment-escalation discussions. AI can also track long-term monitoring needs, sending reminders for patients on medications like Plaquenil or those requiring periodic OCTs and visual fields.
Final Considerations: Safe, Smart and Human-Centered Use
AI can be an invaluable asset in improving speed, accuracy and clinic efficiency, but it must be used thoughtfully. A few key reminders:
- Always use HIPAA-compliant platforms for patient data.
- AI is not perfect. Hallucinations still occur, and many general models lack detailed optometry knowledge.
- Apply a “trust but verify” approach. AI can support clinical thinking but should not replace clinical judgment.
- Plan for staff training to maintain data safety and ensure smooth workflows.
Ultimately, AI should relieve us of repetitive, time-consuming tasks so we can focus on what matters most: connecting with our patients, counseling them, discussing options and delivering care with a human touch.
So, the real question is this: What is the cost of not embracing AI?
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