A new healthcare leader-led consortium launched during the 2025 Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) annual meeting earlier this month is kicking off a cross-sector initiative focused on utilizing ocular and systemic health through artificial intelligence (AI).
Its name: Alliance for Healthcare from the Eye (AHE).
Let’s start with the basics: Explain AHE.
This consortium is composed of health systems, clinicians, industry innovators, life science companies, policymakers, and payers.
Their purpose: Pursuing a shift from reactive to proactive healthcare by leveraging ocular data in support of the Healthcare from the Eye initiative, originally launched by Topcon Healthcare, Inc.
The focus: Providing an approach that is both easy to deploy and ethical, complete with:
- Access to affordable healthcare
- Data access and responsible AI
- Patient care coordination and program sustainability
Backtrack for a moment and talk about Healthcare from the Eye.
This initiative is a clinical strategy in which AI models are applied to ocular imaging data to enable both earlier detection and better management of ocular and systemic diseases.
So far: Topcon has established a growing number of strategic partnerships, collaborations, and acquisitions to further advance its efforts toward this approach—including recently naming a new chief medical officer tasked with furthering the long-term initiative.
- Key to the initiative: Topcon’s Harmony, a clinical image and data management platform for streamlining clinical practice workflows and organizing ophthalmic clinical data (details here).
Got it. So, what’s the goal of this alliance?
Essentially, AHE is looking to utilize the Healthcare from the Eye initiative and embed it into existing workflows of various coordinated care networks: eyecare, primary care, and specialty providers.
- Identify high-risk individuals earlier
- Enhance access to care
- Enable risk stratification and triage to reduce late-stage disease burden
- Shift cost structures toward preventive services
And to protect patients: Patient data would be managed and secured for both transparency and patient privacy.
And who are its members?
Check out this not-so-abbreviated look at the participants and their affiliated institutions/companies:
- Aaron Lee, MD, MSCI (C. Dan and Irene Hunter Endowed Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Washington)
- Ann Ostrovsky, MD (Chief of Ophthalmology Services, ECU Health, Professor of Ophthalmology, Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University)
- Anthony Khawaja, PhD, FRCOphth (Professor of Ophthalmology, University College London)
- Azizi Seixas, PhD (Associate Professor, University of Miami)
- Cecilia Lee, MD (Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Washington)
- Christopher J. Kelly, MD (Ophthalmologist and Associate Chief Medical Information Officer for Data and Analytics, MultiCare Health System)
- David Troilo, PhD (President, SUNY College of Optometry)
- Garry Choy, MD, MBA (Chief Clinical Transformation Officer, UnitedHealth Group, Medical Advisor/Co-Founder, Q Bio)
- Howard Purcell, OD, FAAO (President, New England College of Optometry)
- Jeffrey Goldberg, MD, PhD (Professor and Chair of Ophthalmology, Byers Eye Institute at Stanford University)
- Jonathan Nussdorf, MD (Chair of Ophthalmology, Ochsner Health)
- Kyu Rhee, MD, MPP (President and CEO, National Association of Community Health Clinics)
- Matt Rosenberg, MD (Founding & Managing Partner, Mid Michigan Health Centers)
- Michael Bota, MD (Endocrinologist and Medical Director of Population Health, MultiCare Health System)
- Michael Chaglasian, OD, FAAO (Associate Professor, Illinois College of Optometry)
- Michael Pencina, PhD (Director of Duke AI Health, Duke Health)
- Nicholas J. Volpe, MD (Chairman, Department of Ophthalmology, Northwestern University)
- Pearse Keane, MD, FRCOphth (Professor of Artificial Medical Intelligence, University College London)
- Peter Embí, MD, MS (Co-Director of the ADVANCE AI Center and Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center
- S. Robert Levine, MD (Founder and CEO, Mary Tyler Moore Vision Initiative)
- Tadashi Funahashi, MD (Chief Innovation & Transformation Officer, Kaiser Permanente)
- Ted Leng, MD, MS (Professor of Ophthalmology, Stanford University School of Medicine)
What else to know about it?
Published in JAMA Ophthalmology earlier this month, a foundational manuscript co-authored by AHE members expands on the alliance’s vision and principles in accordance with the Healthcare from the Eye initiative.
A particular focus is the application of oculomics—the science of analyzing ocular data to identify, diagnose, and manage systemic disease—with prescreenings among asymptomatic patients.
- And the resulting potential: Improving “access, affordability, equity, quality, and safety of health care on a global level,” the authors wrote.
Expand on this.
Throughout the manuscript, AHE members emphasized the importance of clinicians using prescreening as a “proactive approach” involving AI-powered applications and high-resolution retinal images to enable earlier patient intervention—and also offered real-world examples of this approach already in action.
They wrote: "[Prescreening] may lead to a transformative shift in chronic disease screening and longitudinal monitoring,” including:
- Diagnosing diseases at early stages
- Enabling proactive clinical risk stratification
- Personalizing disease prevention strategies and therapeutic management
And what’s their plan for implementing this into clinical workflows?
It relies heavily on adding AI and retinal imaging to initial patient assessments and standard vital signs already recorded.
They reasoned: If prescreenings were implemented “at the appropriate sensitivity and specificity levels, the findings may complement other examination findings and even suggest the need for additional testing that would not routinely be performed.”
Go on …
Also noted was the need to establish effective “communication channels and partnership agreements … seems essential to ensure that patients receive necessary follow-up care,” the authors wrote.
This would extend to integrating such prescreening approaches into cloud-based electronic health record (EHR) systems for an overall optimized workflow and data management system.
- See here for details on the alliance’s proposed plans to adopt this—and here for the potential challenges standing in the way (hint: a current lack of FDA-cleared AI systems plays a major role).
And what’s their advice moving forward?
The authors offered recommendations to three key stakeholders for how this oculomics-based Healthcare from the Eye approach should be pursued. Those groups:
- Clinical researchers, pharma companies, healthcare providers, and eyecare providers
- The crux: Conduct more research on oculomics delivery and exploring additional systemic conditions
- Retinal imaging device manufacturers, AI developers, and other software platform organizations
- The crux: Test AI solutions on heterogeneous datasets to ensure responsible AI practices; mitigate privacy risk and security concerns for clinical data utilization
- Policymakers
- The crux: Support approaches geared toward increased access to affordable health care, addressing health inequality, and promoting government program funding for the adoption and integration of prescreening initiatives
Read the complete manuscript here.