Retinex and the Rebuild of the Ophthalmology Workflow

Andy, what about your background in, educationally or otherwise, specifically gave you the insights and expertise that led you to develop Retinex? Obviously, somebody like me wouldn't have the background to develop such a technology or even think I could.

You obviously knew something going into this.

And, uh, how did you ultimately get into this EHR, EMR business, uh, subsequent to, to, to starting or to get started?

Yeah.

And I think it goes back down, Firas, to being in a very spish- busy multi-specialty group, seeing the inefficiencies there, seeing firsthand how the systems we use every day are just not built for how modern, modern medicine actually flows.

And that's what helped me realize there had to be a better way.

And then ultimately, it all started...

I remember I was standing there at one of the workstations using the practice's current EHR, and I told myself, "Firas, I cannot use this EHR for the rest of my life.

I have to do something about it." Now, of course, I didn't start off wanting to build an EHR because that's clearly an incredibly daunting task, as you might imagine.

I started with trying to optimize my use of the current EHR, and I soon realized this bolt-on solution could only take you so far.

You could only optimize around a foundation that fundamentally wasn't designed for what you're trying to do.

And I remember it was May tenth, twenty twenty-five.

I know that because I was at a buddy's wedding when I called my, one of my brilliant scribes.

Her name is Ellen, which you'll soon meet because she's, uh, been gr- I'm grateful she got accepted to UCLA School of Medicine, and she's excited to co- to shadow you.

But without her, Firas, Retinex would, would not exist today.

I told her I had an idea, and I needed her help.

She put in five hundred hours, Firas, during that summer of twenty twenty-five.

Five hundred hours.

And she gave me the bandwidth I needed to ke- keep pushing this forward because at the time, I was still, and am still, a full-time surgical retina specialist working incredibly hard.

And I've been putting in twenty hours a weekend on Retinex for the past nearly two years.

So it's been a journey.

It's been an incredible journey.

But on that journey, you know, I wanted to say I learned the EHRs of today, they work.

They have incredible people on their team.

I want to be really respectful of that.