David F. Chang

About David F. Chang

What major trends in cataract and refractive surgery are catching your attention right now?

I am pleased to see increased focus on the sustainability of high-volume services, such as cataract surgery. If per case revenue can be maintained (e.g., click fees), industry has been willing to collaborate on developing multi-use phaco cassettes/tubing, to reduce the unnecessary amount of plastic and packaging waste that we currently generate. An all-day phaco cassette would reduce case turnover time, shelf storage requirements, waste, and carbon footprint. As we’ve now surpassed 30 million global cataract operations per year, I believe this to be the biggest unmet need in phacoemulsification technology.

In what ways do you think AI and machine learning will impact cataract & refractive surgery?

As chair of the Forsight Robotics (Israel) medical advisory board, I have used their semi-autonomous robotic system to perform cataract surgery in porcine eyes located 15 meters away from my workstation. The hardware is impressive and precise. The next frontier is to develop machine learning AI software that can perform fully autonomous robotic cataract surgery. If a single ophthalmologist can oversee multiple simultaneous robotic surgeries, this has the potential to mitigate looming surgeon shortages while providing the same quality of surgery for routine cases regardless of the patient’s location.