“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” – Albert Einstein
IN MARCH, DR. MITCHELL KATZ, President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals — the largest public hospital system in the U.S. — sat on a panel hosted by CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS and said something that sent a ripple through the healthcare world. He stated without apology that he is prepared to begin replacing radiologists with artificial intelligence. Radiologists. People who spent a decade in school.
Now think about that for a moment in the context of what ODs do every single day.
You interpret data. You read scans. You analyze images. You look at what a piece of technology produces and you make a clinical judgment. If Dr. Katz is prepared to make that argument about radiology, how different, really, is optometry?
I’m not raising that to frighten anyone. I’m raising it because the professionals asking that question right now are the ones who are going to be just fine. AI is moving through healthcare the way the internet moved through retail —slowly, then suddenly, and with very little patience for anyone who wasn’t paying attention.
A company called IDx Technologies already has FDA clearance for an AI system that screens patients for diabetic retinopathy without a physician ever reviewing the images. A primary care nurse uploads the photos. The algorithm reads them. A result is delivered. No specialist required.
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On the patient side, Warby Parker’s Virtual Vision Test has been quietly doing this since 2017. Today, a patient can spend ten minutes reading letters off their iPhone, have a licensed doctor review the results remotely, and walk away with a renewed prescription for $15 — never leaving their house. A real doctor is in the loop. But that doctor is never in the room. And once that prescription hits their inbox, an entire eCommerce ecosystem is ready to fulfill it, complete with virtual try-on tools and AI-powered measurements that eliminate every remaining reason to visit a retail optical.
That’s not coming. That’s already here.
The point is: optometry is not immune to technology disruption. But immunity shouldn’t be the goal. Opportunity should be. It starts with getting genuinely curious about the tools — not just aware of them, curious. The OD who understands what AI diagnostic platforms can and cannot do is in a completely different position than the one who ignores them. You don’t need to write code. You need to know enough to lead your patients through what the technology is telling them, and why your clinical interpretation still matters on top of it.
Then, invest in the patient experience like it is your single greatest competitive advantage, because it is. AI can read a scan. It cannot remember that your patient has been putting off a referral because she’s scared, or that the last time he came in he mentioned his mother just lost her vision. That human knowledge, the continuity of the relationship, is not something any algorithm is coming for. Be intentional. Deepen it. Nurture it.
And one more issue: continuing education. Optometrists are responsible professionals. They earn their CE hours. That’s not the problem. The problem is which hours they’re earning. There’s a natural pull toward the familiar — the clinical courses you already know, the topics you’re already comfortable in. But this moment calls for a deliberate stretch into less comfortable territory. Ocular technology. Health informatics. AI-assisted diagnostics. The courses that feel a little foreign right now are exactly the ones worth pursuing.
