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Tareq Nabhan, OD, an associate clinical professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) College of Optometry, and lead attending physician in the optometry department at Affinia Healthcare, teaches his students how to navigate the basics of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on their future practices. His research focuses on the beneficial aspects of AI as it relates to increasing patient access to eyecare.



Tareq Nabhan, OD



“In my didactic instruction, I teach a telehealth course along with the Introduction to Optometry course at UMSL,” said Dr. Nabhan. “The students are introduced to AI as a primer, then we get into AI solutions used in optometry/ophthalmology. I also include an assignment for our students to use large language models [LLMs] (e.g., ChatGPT). I introduce the students to the capabilities of image and video generators such as DALLE and SORA.”

Nabhan continued, “A clinical complement is a tele-retina service at a 15-site federal-qualified health center (FQHC). We have just begun discussions on what leveraging end-user AI solutions might look like with diabetic retinopathy screenings at other sites or in mobile clinics.

“And another aspect of our research includes leveraging geospatial data to identify other variables that play into access, awareness and affordability barriers to eyecare services. Geospatial data has been leveraging AI well before eyecare, and we’re excited to explore ways we begin to identify relationships and trends that can be addressed at scale,” he said.

Dr. Nabhan also points to efficiency in patient education and remote diagnosing of eye conditions as two areas where AI could be particularly valuable to eyecare practitioners.





“This addition [AI] allows us to send patients home with appropriate information to help them better understand their condition and our management approach(es),” said Dr. Nabhan. “We believe this significantly helps patients by creating appropriate and realistic expectations in their condition(s) and our management plans.

“With regard to autonomous disease detection in clinics, we know what some solutions can and can’t do, which we value not only for our clinic but for our patients and our profession overall. Identifying quality solutions and sharing our results with the optometric and ophthalmologic communities allows us to all better identify ways we can use these solutions, along with ways we shouldn’t. Moreover, partnering with developers to create, challenge and validate solutions is a responsibility we believe we carry. To that end, we have been heavily engaged in helping develop autonomous solutions capable of multi-disease detection capabilities that have shown best-in-class performances on many large, public datasets,” he said.

In practice, Dr. Nabhan said he has utilized AI infographics to illustrate how technology can work in tandem with practitioners to help detect eye abnormalities during routine exams.

“We have shown our patients what AI lesion detections look like through heatmaps, emphasizing that what we see as abnormal, so has the AI,” he said. “We believe this can help improve patient acceptance toward these solutions by showing our agreements with it along with our testing of these autonomous solutions.

“We’re working on developing our own gallery of solutions for the training of opticians and students, domestic and abroad. With the graphic design demands involved in creating these solutions, we’re excited to utilize generative AI solutions such as DALLE and SORA for our illustrations and animations,” he said.

For the next generation of optometrists, Dr. Nabhan says, working with technology is second nature. His students are eager to learn how AI can enhance their work with patients.

“AI and machine learning solutions are here, and our schools and colleges of optometry carry a significant responsibility to introduce our students to AI and how these emerging technologies will change the way we practice and learn,” he said.

- Stefani Kim, Senior Editor, Lenses & Technology