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Discover the potential in using AI for dry eye care
By Rana Taji, OD
March 9, 2026
When I acquired my practice in late 2019, my focus was squarely on medical eye care. I had spent my career in ocular disease and surgical co-management, and my goal was to continue that trajectory.
However, the world—and my practice—changed significantly in 2020. The need to pivot, especially when I decided to invest in in-office treatments like radio frequency and IPL, was a risk, but it paid off. My dry eye clinic took off, and it now constitutes over 60% of my practice. This incredible growth brought with it a need for a new level of efficiency to manage the complexity and volume of advanced dry eye care.
Just over a year ago, we adopted CSI Dry Eye Software, an AI-powered platform geared specifically towards our dry eye patients. The integration of this technology wasn’t just about getting a new piece of equipment. It was about fundamentally restructuring the flow and capacity of our clinic. The efficiency benefits we’ve seen have touched every part of the patient journey, allowing us to manage more complex care while improving the quality of our service.
Streamlining the Clinical Workflow
The most immediate and powerful benefit is how the software streamlines the development of a diagnostic algorithm. For me, coming from a surgical and disease management background, having this system in place has been a game-changer. Once we input all the diagnostic findings—everything from inflammatory markers to tear breakup and meibography results—the AI capability takes over. It guides our interpretation, suggesting a final diagnosis (such as evaporative, aqueous deficient or mixed mechanism dry eye) and grading the severity as mild, moderate or severe.
This is a tremendous time saver and a safety net. It allows the practitioner to be guided to the final conclusion, ensuring nothing is overlooked. It’s an incredibly impressive tool. Believe it or not, when I first started using it, I ran a parallel track—comparing my own diagnosis to the AI’s. What I found was that the software unexpectedly sharpened my own diagnostic abilities, prompting me to look closer at data points I might have previously glossed over. The AI functions as a complement to my clinical skill set.
Furthermore, the platform allows for customized templates. If I want a streamlined approach for my MGD patients, I can set up a template where the recommended treatments—be it IPL, home care, or specific retail therapies—are automatically populated. This customization is a huge leap forward for consistency and speed in the clinical decision-making process.
Maximizing Operational Efficiency
The operational benefits of the AI platform are equally significant. One of the primary reasons I brought the system in was for organizational control. Everything is now consolidated into one place, which is vital for a growing specialty practice. This centralized data allows us to track a patient’s progress over time, both subjectively (using scores like OSDI) and objectively (through metrics like tear breakup time), with easily generated, populated charts.
Data collection, which used to be a point of friction, has been simplified immensely. Patients receive emails or text messages to fill out forms ahead of time. If they forget, they can easily scan a QR code right in the office. This ensures that by the time the patient is in the exam room, the technician-driven portion of the data collection is largely complete.
This efficiency translates directly into one of the most critical practice benefits: time savings. We schedule our dry eye assessments for 90 minutes. However, because the software handles the intensive data input and reporting, we are no longer using all 90 minutes. I’m able to have more in-depth conversations with patients in about an hour and 10 minutes, without the burden of the administrative tasks that are necessary for dry eye patients.
This reduction in administrative time is crucial. I don’t use that saved time to simply rush to the next patient. I use it intentionally to focus on patient communication and education, which is the cornerstone of building rapport and trust, and ultimately, ensuring treatment adherence. The software makes my practice more efficient so I can be a more empathetic and attentive doctor.
Elevated Communication and Referral Networks
The platform has also fundamentally elevated our communication, both with patients and with our vital referral network. As a practice that receives a significant number of referrals, we needed a way to effectively communicate the thoroughness of our work to outside doctors. The AI system provides that by exporting thorough reports for referring doctors. These reports contain the patient’s full diagnostic profile and our treatment recommendations moving forward. This makes the referring doctor feel comfortable, recognizing the value of the referral because of how exhaustive the assessment and clear the plan are.
For patients, the software addresses a long-standing issue: patients reporting that they didn’t receive enough information, even when we handed them paper instructions. Now, the software generates comprehensive reports summarizing their diagnosis, treatment instructions and recommended plan. When everything is in the patient’s hands electronically, it reinforces repetition and ensures that the technician, the receptionist and I are all delivering a consistent message.
Implementing the AI software was about much more than a new feature—it was about implementing an organizational system that could support my practice’s growth. It has sharpened my diagnostic skills, streamlined every stage of the patient visit, saved us valuable time and elevated our communication standards, proving that technology, when used correctly, is the ultimate efficiency tool for modern medical care.
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Rana Taji, OD, is the owner and Medical Director of Toronto Medical Eye Associates in North York, Ontario. She is a lecturer, offering subject matter expertise on dry eye disease. In addition, she partakes in multiple pharmaceutical projects, and serves as an adjunct faculty clinical supervisor for student doctors from U.S. and Canadian optometry schools. |
