Oku Digital Health, Inc., a new artificial intelligence (AI)-based digital health company, has entered the global eyecare space.
The company launched earlier this week as a spin-off of Topcon Healthcare, Inc. ahead of a planned debut during the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) 2026 annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Big news! Let’s start with the basics.
Headquartered in La Jolla, California, Oku’s official operations include connecting “eye insights to whole-body care.”
Translation: The company connects routine eye exam care with broader patient health data to enable:
- Earlier identification of chronic disease-associated signs
- More coordinated clinical care
- Real-world insights supporting commercial drug development
Talk more about this “connected” network.
The company’s operations are based on Topcon’s infrastructure, with oculomics at the center of +10K care locations (plus +50K installed diagnostic devices and over 2.2 million screened patients outside of standard eyecare) across the globe.
- To refresh: Oculomics involves using the eye as a non-invasive window to systemic health.
By utilizing AI-supported diagnostics, electronic health record (EHR) integration, and referral workflows, the company is looking to connect two key demographics:
- Healthcare providers: primary care, optometry, ophthalmology, and specialties
- Pharmaceutical partners: patient data and real-world evidence (RWE)
Backtrack for a moment: Refresh me on Topcon’s infrastructure.
The company operates on a diagnostic imaging infrastructure that leads back to its ongoing Healthcare from the Eye initiative.
- What this is: a multi-year clinical strategy in which AI models are applied to imaging data—from the eye—to enable both earlier detection and better management of ocular and systemic diseases
- Check out the company’s progress toward this approach via a growing number of strategic collaborations.
- Key to this: the utilization of Topcon’s Harmony, a clinical image and data management platform for streamlining clinical practice workflows and organizing ophthalmic clinical data (details here)
And for Oko?
The digital health company is building on that initiative by extending it “into a connected care and life sciences ecosystem."
More specifically: Oku is built on Microsoft Azure’s cloud infrastructure, optimized for “AI workloads with NVIDIA CUDA libraries (collectively branded as NVIDIA CUDA-X).”
So who’s leading the charge on this?
Topcon executives and experts with experience from “technology disruptors” (such as the aforementioned Microsoft and NVIDIA) as well as research and academic institutions across the country.
Most notably: Former Topcon President and CEO Ali Tafreshi (who currently serves as chief strategy officer), has been named CEO of Oku.
Joining in him on the company’s leadership team is:
- Trent Norris as chief operating officer (background here)
- Matthew Lungren, MD, MPH, as chief data AI officer (background here)
- Daniela Ferrara, MD, PhD, FASRS, MPH, as chief medical officer (background here)
- Jacques Gilbert as chief strategy and business development officer (background here)
And how does Oku plan to roll out this connected solution?
One component is a point-of-care (POC) retina exam, where retinal images are captured during routine patient visits and then analyzed with AI insights—or remote interpretation from a licensed clinician—to help diagnose and triage patients.
- The intent: to help primary care and comprehensive eyecare practices identify high-risk patients who may require further eyecare evaluation and enable a direct referral to an appropriate provider.
Explain the big-picture perspective.
CEO Trafreshi noted that primary care practices are currently faced with “significant operational burden in closing quality care gaps, while eye care practices are looking for ways to expand their clinical role and strengthen patient relationships.”
That’s where Oku comes in.
“Oku connects POC screening, clinical data, and referral pathways directly into routine workflows,” he added. “By identifying high-risk patients earlier and connecting them to the right level of care, we can help improve quality-measure performance, expand patient access, and reduce unnecessary clinical burden.”
Can you get more specific on what Oku’s AI is actually detecting?
More specifically, this workflow is analyzing captured retinal images for signs associated with:
- Cardiovascular (CV) disease
- Chronic kidney disease
- Hypertension
- Diabetic retinopathy
- Other sight-threatening ocular diseases (glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration [AMD])
Let’s circle back to that second piece: using RWE for drug development.
The company is tackling long-standing clinical development challenges by leaning on its inventory of REW ophthalmic data to “accelerate drug discovery” across several therapeutic areas: ocular, CV, renal, metabolic, and neurodegenerative diseases.
- The thinking: “Oku’s Harmony solution turns routine eye exams into faster trial candidate identification, recruitment, better retention and scalable RWE.”
And as Dr. Lungren, Oku’s chief data AI officer, noted: "Acting on these insights helps pharma sponsors advance drug development toward precision medicine by identifying ideal trial candidates, designing sharper protocols, and tracking longitudinal outcomes."
See here for more on how this works, including how patient data privacy is protected and clinical trial variability reduced through the company’s hybrid reading model.
That’s quite the introduction Oku is unveiling with …
Indeed it is. And it comes ahead of the company’s official debut this weekend at the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) 2026 annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.
If you’re attending, stop by the Topcon booth (#1727) to learn more about its launch and operations.
Otherwise, reach out to the company directly.
- For healthcare providers, click here.
- For pharma companies, click here.