How AI Is Reshaping the Future of Eye Care
Interview with Dr Aleksandra (Ola) Spencer, Group Chief Operating Officer
As healthcare systems across Europe grapple with ageing populations, workforce shortages and rising patient demand, ophthalmology provider Optegra is positioning itself at the forefront of digital transformation. By combining AI-driven patient pathways with a deeply human approach to care, the company aims to improve clinical outcomes while easing pressure on medical professionals. Ola Spencer spoke to European Business about the opportunities and challenges of integrating artificial intelligence into modern healthcare delivery.
European Business: Dr Spencer, as a pan-European single-specialty organisation, Optegra has been providing ophthalmic surgeries, diagnostics and consultations for many years, ranging from cataract surgery and laser eye surgery to elective refractive lens exchange procedures, while consistently remaining at the forefront of digital innovation.
Ola Spencer: We are building on four strategic pillars to harness the opportunities digitisation creates for both patients and healthcare providers. The first is enabling a seamless patient journey, from digital booking and online triage to pre-operative assessment. A key component of this is our use of agentic AI to help manage patient pathways, particularly during pre-operative evaluations. Since launching Iris, our AI-powered voice and chatbot assistant, in 2024, it has already conducted more than 50,000 assessments. At the same time, we have begun using AI-driven clinical decision support tools to assist clinicians in identifying disease at earlier stages. This allows us to prioritise high-risk patients and monitor outcomes more effectively. The technology has proven especially valuable in managing high-volume chronic conditions such as AMD and glaucoma, where patients require ongoing monitoring and long-term disease management. Naturally, all final medical decisions remain firmly in the hands of qualified healthcare professionals.
European Business: What are the other pillars you have been focusing on?
Ola Spencer: Another major focus area is operational efficiency. We use digital planning tools to optimise operating theater utilization, staff allocation and equipment management. This is especially important in healthcare systems where demand consistently exceeds capacity, which is currently the case across much of Europe’s public healthcare landscape, where long surgical waiting lists remain a major challenge. Our digital solutions help generate efficiency gains that translate directly into faster patient access to care. We have also implemented AI-supported post-operative care with highly encouraging results. After cataract surgery, our virtual assistant Iris contacts patients at home, at their convenience, to help identify those who may be at increased risk of complications, enabling us to allocate resources more effectively. Most of these patients are over the age of 60, so one might assume they would be hesitant to engage with digital healthcare tools. In reality, the response has been overwhelmingly positive: More than 90% of users say they would recommend Iris to friends or family because they appreciated the convenience and reassurance of speaking with our voice assistant from the comfort of their own homes.
European Business: That demonstrates the potential of AI and digitisation in healthcare. What challenges remain?
Ola Spencer: One challenge is that there are still relatively few medical-device-grade AI tools that have been awarded the certifications necessary for widespread deployment. In addition, Europe’s highly fragmented regulatory environment can slow implementation significantly. Many healthcare providers also continue to rely on legacy systems that limit visibility across the patient journey, particularly when patients move between primary care providers and specialists. However, the greatest challenge is often change management. Successfully adopting new technologies requires clinicians and care teams to embrace entirely new ways of working, which is why they have to be on board from the very beginning.
European Business: What other factors are essential to Optegra’s long-term success?
Ola Spencer: While operational workflows and digital processes may sound highly technical, healthcare remains profoundly human at its core. If clinics are well-organised and patient pathways are clear and standardised, patients naturally feel more reassured and less anxious. At the same time, clinicians are able to devote their full attention, empathy and expertise to the people sitting in front of them instead of spending excessive time interacting with administrative systems. The technology itself has existed for quite some time. The real opportunity now lies in deploying it broadly and intelligently to further improve patient outcomes and experiences.
European Business: Where do you see the next major breakthroughs emerging?
Ola Spencer: Compared with industries such as financial services, healthcare has been relatively slow in adopting AI technologies. But the long-term direction is becoming increasingly clear, and the opportunities are extraordinary. AI has the potential to help healthcare systems maintain – and even improve – standards of care despite mounting pressures from ageing populations, increasingly complex comorbidities and severe workforce shortages. In many respects, adopting AI is becoming less of an option and more of a necessity. Looking ahead, I believe we will see a major shift toward preventative and predictive care. By analysing medical histories and patient data earlier, AI will help identify individuals at risk and support more personalised treatment pathways. This is a significant change as many eye conditions can be treated more successfully the earlier they are identified. In ophthalmology specifically, this could extend far beyond eye health alone. The eyes provide remarkable insight into overall human health because they contain biomarkers linked to neurodegenerative and cardiovascular conditions. That opens up exciting possibilities for earlier diagnosis, monitoring and intervention across a much broader spectrum of diseases in the future.