Kerry D. Solomon, MD, will give this year’s Cornelius D. Binkhorst, MD, Lecture, at the ASCRS Annual Meeting, which will take place on the ASCRS Main Stage on Saturday, April 11. He plans to focus his presentation on artificial intelligence.
Dr. Solomon has been involved in cataract and refractive surgery for 30+ years and is also the co-inventor and co-founder, along with his partners Jeremiah Elliot and Kyle Smith, of the Veracity Surgical Planner (Zeiss), which he said launched in 2017 and was one of the first artificial intelligence tools in ophthalmology. His lecture will be titled, “Artificial Intelligence and Ophthalmology: Where Are We? Where Are We Going? And How Do We Get There Responsibly?”
Source: ASCRS
There are many opportunities now for ophthalmologists to get involved with AI, Dr. Solomon said, and this includes in their own practices and lives, as well as with industry. There are ways to explore using AI in day-to-day practice workflow, as well as in surgery. AI can be applied to practice management, Dr. Solomon said, adding that it could provide assistance to help physicians see patients more efficiently and more effectively.
Dr. Solomon is excited to address this topic in his lecture because it’s a new topic, an area where he has experience and is actively involved, and one that is timely given the exploding advancement of AI. He added that while there is excitement in this area, there is also a lot of misinformation, a lot of hype, and a lot of concern. He hopes to address all of these things in his lecture.
“I’ve worked very diligently in my practice to try to optimize my customer service, my patient experience, my staff experience, and my patient outcomes,” he said. “There is an impending crisis coming in the next 5–10 years with a projected increase in the general aging population and fewer ophthalmic surgeons available to manage those patients. Physicians are going to need to find ways to do more with less in the near future. AI can help be part of that solution.”
His lecture will also look to the future of where things are going from software in artificial intelligence to robotic AI.
Dr. Solomon completed his fellowship in cataract and refractive surgery and corneal transplantation at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Prior to his fellowship, he completed his residency in ophthalmology at the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky, and an internship in medicine at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. In addition, Dr. Solomon completed a fellowship in ophthalmic pathology at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. He received both his doctorate in medicine and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Solomon has achieved status among the country’s best ophthalmic surgeons. He was one of the first in the country to perform laser-assisted cataract surgery, implant multifocal and astigmatic correcting lenses, and perform topography-guided LASIK. He has received dozens of awards and routinely speaks at both national and international meetings and hospitals, and to date has presented more than 600 lectures and live surgical demonstrations worldwide.
Additionally, Dr. Solomon and his wife, Cindi, an attorney, established Operation Sight, a non-profit organization that provides free cataract surgeries in South Carolina for residents who could otherwise not afford it. Dr. Solomon has actively championed Operation Sight since its founding, mentoring younger ophthalmologists to participate to expand the program’s reach. As chair of the national ASCRS Board, he helped establish the Operation Sight model on a national level, encouraging other ophthalmologists across the country to adopt similar programs.
Operation Sight was launched through the ASCRS Foundation in 2014 to serve financially vulnerable, uninsured individuals who cannot afford or access care and has provided more than 10,000 cataract surgeries to date, with more than 800 volunteers.
