At the 2026 ASOA meeting at ASCRS, Ben Seals, MBA, CEO of Thomas Eye Group in Greater Atlanta, discussed the many roles of AI in ophthalmic practices. Here, he shares key takeaways with Ophthalmology Management. A transcript of our full discussion, edited for clarity, appears below.
I'm excited to share a little bit with you about some of the points that we talked to in our presentation on “AI Agents in Ophthalmology: Where We Are Now, and What's Next.”
As a practice administrator, one of the key things that you need to know about AI technology is that not all of the tools are compliant within healthcare. It is important that as you evaluate each of the tools and look at different vendors, you ensure those vendors are willing to comply with your organization's HIPAA and PHI governance requirements—and that you actually have an AI compliance strategy to protect your patients’ information and your practice.
As a practice leader, AI currently presents a great opportunity for you to experiment with different technologies that are available from industry while also enhancing your current patient experience. There are a number of different technology applications that have already entered the market and are delivering results for practices. One that I am most excited about is the ability to deploy AI technology into your call centers, so that you can accelerate and create a better patient experience while they’re trying to schedule an appointment or ask questions.
At Thomas Eye Group, we've leveraged a company named Revival Health to create agentic AI voice agents that are answering our phone calls and helping patients reschedule their appointments or address administrative tasks. Ultimately, this creates a relief to the individuals inside of our organization who were previously supporting that work, and it creates better access to our patients because we are able to answer their questions faster and directly and give them a better patient experience by providing them with access to this technology.
Ultimately, where we landed in our presentation was encouraging each practice to vet the tools that they’re using; make sure that they address key priorities for the practice; and [identify] key areas of opportunity for the practice to improve their performance.
We are in this unique opportunity within our lifetime to see another version of an industrial revolution, [in which] how we work and the manners in which we interact with data and computers are changing. It's changing at an accelerated pace. As we look to keep pace with that technological innovation, it's ultimately a great opportunity for our practices to leverage technology into the future, to ensure that our doctors deliver great care to our patients. It's been exciting to put this presentation together as part of ASOA, and I look forward to hearing from you into the future.