Exploring and Exploiting Lasers in Ophthalmology
Exploring and Exploiting Lasers in Ophthalmology
Dr. Blumenkranz: Fax machines and phone calls are not the answer to what I would call "complex coordinated care." We are trying at Stanford to do this across the board, whether it's ophthalmology or a clinician dealing with chronic diseases, to figure out how to coordinate care between the different providers. We know that medicine is a team sport today, as opposed to the era when the master clinician could do it all. That is where digital tools -- even things like swept-source OCTs -- come in. I have been looking at some of the new images that allow us to not only produce cross-sectional anatomy, but also to reconstruct and render retinal images that arguably provide more informative than a traditional photograph. Who would have thought when we first saw the technology that we would be able to create slices in various different planes? I have been quite encouraged by that.
Dr. Steinert: Absolutely. It's easy to grasp that we have moved to an era in which patients check their blood sugar multiple times every day, and their insulin dose is modulated in real time by the hour. We start having meaningful and reliable home vision testing of various kinds on apps and smart phones, and then we know when to re-intervene with an anti-VEGF drug to prevent disease progression. It is clear-cut that this is where we need to be going.
Dr. Blumenkranz: Aside from the patient's perspective, we look at workflow. You know how hard it is to figure out efficient ways to run an office, to get the people in who need to be seen, and to not burden patients who don't need to be seen so frequently with office visits. It speaks even to the medical economics of looking at the conversion from medically optimal medicine to socially optimal medicine, where we find a reasonable balance between cost and effectiveness. These are the tools that are going to help us.
Dr. Steinert: I would like to thank you for taking time from your very busy schedule, compounded with the honor of the Jackson Lecture and all the work that went into that, both in preparing it and presenting it. Thank you for taking the time to come here and share your insights. This is Dr. Roger Steinert with Dr. Mark Blumenkranz for Medscape Ophthalmology. Thanks for joining us.
Complex Coordinated Care: A Team Sport
Dr. Blumenkranz: Fax machines and phone calls are not the answer to what I would call "complex coordinated care." We are trying at Stanford to do this across the board, whether it's ophthalmology or a clinician dealing with chronic diseases, to figure out how to coordinate care between the different providers. We know that medicine is a team sport today, as opposed to the era when the master clinician could do it all. That is where digital tools -- even things like swept-source OCTs -- come in. I have been looking at some of the new images that allow us to not only produce cross-sectional anatomy, but also to reconstruct and render retinal images that arguably provide more informative than a traditional photograph. Who would have thought when we first saw the technology that we would be able to create slices in various different planes? I have been quite encouraged by that.
Dr. Steinert: Absolutely. It's easy to grasp that we have moved to an era in which patients check their blood sugar multiple times every day, and their insulin dose is modulated in real time by the hour. We start having meaningful and reliable home vision testing of various kinds on apps and smart phones, and then we know when to re-intervene with an anti-VEGF drug to prevent disease progression. It is clear-cut that this is where we need to be going.
Dr. Blumenkranz: Aside from the patient's perspective, we look at workflow. You know how hard it is to figure out efficient ways to run an office, to get the people in who need to be seen, and to not burden patients who don't need to be seen so frequently with office visits. It speaks even to the medical economics of looking at the conversion from medically optimal medicine to socially optimal medicine, where we find a reasonable balance between cost and effectiveness. These are the tools that are going to help us.
Dr. Steinert: I would like to thank you for taking time from your very busy schedule, compounded with the honor of the Jackson Lecture and all the work that went into that, both in preparing it and presenting it. Thank you for taking the time to come here and share your insights. This is Dr. Roger Steinert with Dr. Mark Blumenkranz for Medscape Ophthalmology. Thanks for joining us.