Welcome to Real Talk on AI and I care with your host, Dr. Scott Morris. And I'm co host, Dr. Rehan Ahmed.
In each episode, we discuss current news, adding a little AI education, and debate innovative AI tools and topics that will change the industry. Hello, everybody. This is Scott Morris. This is Dr.
Rehan Ahmed. We are here and we want to give you a little information like we do every week. We're going to start out with the knowledge bite, which we're going to talk about as we promised last week, the world of digital twins. And then Ryan and I have this.
I hope it's going to be an audience going to find it really interesting. We're going to talk about retail AI, the state of retail AI, and how it's impacting not just businesses, but consumers. So I'll get started with the knowledge bite here. So, yes, I'm really excited about hearing about digital twins.
I know we talked about digital twins as Dr. Ranya Habash, and just plugging that podcast that we did several, maybe several months ago, but she talked about digital twins. And so really excited to refresh our audience on that topic. Well, it's really interesting for any of you who are listening when you when you guys listen to this, we'll have just released one over innovator podcasts with Dr.
Danielle Farara, who's the chief medical officer at TopCon, and she also brought up the topic of digital twins. So, you know, when two of the leading experts in the world of AI and I care, both bring the same subject up, I was like, wow, we're probably need to really be paying attention to this and talk a little bit about it. So let's think this. So I'm going to I try to always explain things a little bit of a story.
So, imagine if you could build a bridge or a jet engine or, hey, let's be crazy, even a human heart to test exactly how it would react to a hurricane or in the case of a human heart or a jet engine, a decade of wear and tear before the physical version, version ever existed. Now, this isn't a simulation. This is we create what's known as a digital twin. Now, while we can think about like a standard 3D model, that's just a static picture.
A digital twin is let's think of it as a living breathing virtual map or virtual machine. This days perfectly in sync with its physical counterpart. So you're making a twin that isn't real. It's virtual, but it mimics the real thing.
So let's think about how it works. So the secret as we always talk about, right, honey, it seems to be the word that we come up with every single week as the connecting factor, which is data. So digital twins have a couple unique things. They have sensors.
And you know, we talked about this before. Sensors for digital twins are no different than senses for a human being. This is a physical object is outfitted with sensors, whether it be machine vision or proprioceptive touch or some type of chemical sensor that measures everything from temperature to vibration to pressure. The sensors then send, which is the second part called the loop, the sensor send a real time data to the digital version.
And then you get part three is the digital versus oh, let me make sense of data. And if let's say a bolt loosens on the turbine and a jet engine when it goes in high turbulence, the digital twin knows instantly says, guess what, in these situations, this bolt in this turbine is going to fail. It can run this for hours or repeat itself for decade or decades worth of information, all in minutes, because of the compute power. And so in letting instead of putting this bolt on an airplane, but then, you know, we have 1000 of those flying around the world and eventually one of these bolts loose and turbulence and the plane goes down, we can now kind of preemptively see these things happening before it happens.
And using AI and machine learning machine learning engineers can basically give a lot of what if scenarios they speed up the time the digital world to milliseconds instead of days, weeks, months, should predict when a part will break saving millions and repairs and hopefully preventing big accidents. How does that work? Because it's not just for engines, what if it was for ice, what if we could represent by doing some data into a system and then have the machine sense different things, different scenarios and predict how would this medicine work with this condition, how is this procedure work with this anatomical differential. And when we start thinking about surgeons, and I think that's going to be one of the big ones right on the internet is when I'm done with this to get your feedback, you know, when we start surgeons begin creating digital twins of patients eyes to practice complex surgeries like not just cataract surgery, but you know, D sec DMACC for new PKP.
Right, right. The example that Dr. Bosch talked about was with glaucoma surgery, I believe, or glaucoma medications and you know, you can right now we have calculators, we have risk scores, you know, you can even run with current technology or technology or pre AI runs simulations of, okay, you have a patient who has a pressure of 22, for example, and they're cupped at this gets 0.6 and this is and then just run a simulation and or look at calculations. And I'm running 1000 times varying one small variable every time.
The the benefit of a digital twin is that it is looking at your specific optic nerve anatomy, your specific OCT, your specific visual fields and the past visual fields of progression and giving the doctor and the patient. Real time feedback, oh, this is what the surgery, you know, this is what this intervention would do, the surgery, this is what a drop would do, this is what your visual field would look like with these scenarios, so it gives you just a lot more ability to sort of predict what different future outcomes and since scenario plan. And so it doesn't you know, the point is it's not making the decision, but it allows you to have a much more sophisticated conversation with that with the patient and their family saying hey these are your options, this is where option A could lead in a very real way and this option be could lead in a very early updated to back it up and it's an explainable way. So the idea is it's for surgical planning and sort of treatment planning is a huge benefit that I'm and I can't wait to see sort of commercial applications of this.
Yeah, I mean, I think what it's going to do, you know, around is going to turn what we've done historically is trial and error. And we learned from that we call it experience right but in the future, we might have such precision and predictability that we bridged what was usually took physical experience to figure out teaming that was just, I mean, the infinite possibilities that with we could use with data and really truly developing personalized predictive. precision medicine that's. We've talked about that before and that's just absolutely fascinates me is I hope I hope I'm around long enough to see how it impacts rent and surgery and glaucoma surgery and all that kind of stuff I just.
I think the possibilities are endless. And the way things are progressing, I don't think it's going to be that long so be optimistic. I think you will be I think you will be around to see it and maybe soon. All right, well, let's let's move from the knowledge by you know you and I talked we talk about this for the audience you know Ray and I talk a lot during the week and and we both get to talk to a lot of really smart people out in in this profession, this industry.
And it seems to keep coming up the last couple of weeks is this crazy subject of retail AI you know we've talked about we've talked about all the different kinds of AI that are out there. But lately it seems like I keep hearing about this and I wonder maybe we think oh retail is not going to really impact I care. But you got to remember that a huge chunk of what I care does is retail contact glasses, artificial tears drugs, you know over the counters it's a huge part of our business. And I got thinking about it you know the last couple days going I wonder how it's really going to impact this and you know I I like you you know we've done this talk before we talk about let's call it outbound retail AI.
Right so you have the things like inventory management and how we're going to market this from a business perspective like looking at it from a business how do we go market that we have this and you know how's it going to help with logistics and distribution and all that kind of stuff right and so maybe let's start there I mean you know when we talk about retail AI is the savings. That would go on by not having dead stock i.e. frames that never sell contacts that we never dispense the cost savings of build predictably look at true inventory management. I just I don't even know if I can calculate that number on about how much money and waste it's not just how much money we would save in our office but how much waste we would prevent I think about contact lenses like we have this just closet full of contact lenses rayon and you know about once every year six months to a year my staff goes through and anything that's outdated you know as past this expiration date.
You scan it so you can get new stuff and you throw it away and I'm like that's happening on thousands of practices all over the country every day or every year we're wasting millions on diagnostic millions and diagnostic lenses. And you made a good point good point about outbound AI I mean if you're not as and the great thing about I think our specialties in both optometry and ophthalmology is you know we have our own retail aspect we have a lot of money. We have lenses and procedures like lacy and PRK and smile and so if you're not on the chat bots Gemini or gbt if customers are not looking on Google anymore they're asking what are the best what are the best you know is lacy right for me is this contact lens best what are the best sunglasses out there right now. All those questions that's that's an element I mean that's how customers find your product your services if you're not on their services if you're not you know there used to be something called I mean you stood there still SEO right search engine optimization and I was optimization for how do you get on these lms and I think that's a really important question retailers and ask.
That's that's what we talk about inbound right we're going from you I was talking about outbound you're you kind of bridge that gap and to talk about inbound retail AI like what is the consumer doing because it doesn't matter what we're selling if the consumer's not buying. It doesn't matter what we're selling and so you talked about that that there's a phrase that you heard this week it said search to service searches dead I mean the end of the search bar that's over I mean we're just not going to do that anymore there is going to be. A service that's I don't know in term for you know I kind of came up with this term yesterday and I'm not sure it's going to stick but I think we're going to conversational commerce because we're going to have agents that say I want to find eager you're going to go to your agents say I want to find I don't know this jacket because I have this special occasion coming up you know it's in Italy on the beach so it's going to be warm it's going to be a little humid but I can't be linen because I have to travel and I look good and we're going to be. And I look good and white is going to go with this pants and I want to do all for 250 bucks and you're just going to go sure here's 50 things that I would suggest instantly instead of scrolling and searching and looking through Pinterest and 20 different commercial magazines search is dead yeah it's just you know that was not not sort of talk too much about what you know what I'm working but do that was the inspiration behind.
When you know that was the inspiration behind news when news for those you don't know it's a service that I'm a company that. I have that is helping customers do exactly that with with I work and frames it's exactly what you talked about. I'm not getting too much of a plug ray on but the audience I've seen this this is the future this is the future of obstacles it is you're just not going to carry my staffs do an inventory this week rayon since I'm gone the next two days they're just they're going to look at inventory we have ballpark 750 frames I hope I never have center 50 frames in my office ever again because we're going to use technology that make all frames everywhere in the world searchable instant. Yeah and just how you described it wouldn't be great if there was a service that just looked at me told me what looked good on me why it looked good on me what was available and the reach and this is where it's great for retailers what what is available and the retailers selection and what is from a business perspective what is the product that's sort of wanting to be moved and then retargeting that customer later on with you know with the more specific you know I get ads it kills me it's like I sign up for a lot of things online with me Modress and I'll get an I'll get an ad of hey one of these cat I frames look great on you I'm like wait I never told anyone I like I like cat I frames why are you why are you saying you I'm not going to do that I'm going to do that I want to do that.
like, you know, I get ads, it kills me. It's like, I sign up for a lot of things online with my email address and I'll get an ad of, hey, one of these cat-eye frames look great on you. I'm like, wait, I never told anyone I like, I don't like cat-eye frames. Why are you sending me a mail or a circa 1999?
Like you don't know anything about me. You're emailing me this. You know, you should use your- And right now, I'm sure you can pull most things off, but I'm not sure what that is. Yeah, that's right.
So the ability to really know your inventory, know what frames people like and don't like, to really get signals upstream of their outside of the behavior from a CRM that's super sophisticated. I mean, this is really in-depth knowledge. We sort of think about it as Tinder for optically. Well, you know, and that kind of brings at that point, right?
I mean, what do consumers want? So many times we think about our own business, we forget that the most important chair is the one where the patient sits, the consumer sits. And I think that our consumers, I was- you were on the phone this morning when we were talking about, you know, what these AR mirrors, I walked into our local Nordstroms this weekend with my wife. And there was one of the fitting mirrors, those virtual fitting mirrors, kind of like what you're doing with Muse.
There was a line of women waiting in the women's section. There was a line of waiting, of women waiting to virtually try on clothes so they didn't have to go into the fitting room to try them on. And I remember looking at my wife and going, it all just changed everything. It all just changed because patients want, and for the audience, this is a big word.
And we've been talking about this word a lot lately. They want a frictionless process. Trying stuff on, buying it, bringing it back, sending it back through UPS or, you know, staying at- that's friction. People want frictionless.
And once they get used to frictionless, they are going, in my opinion, they will accept nothing less ever again. Yeah, totally agree. So I think retail AI, we talked about customer outreach. We talked a little bit about inventory and inventory management.
I think those were the obvious sort of places. Another thing is customer or patient education. For sure. And that's, you know, in that, for, especially for ophthalmology, when I was like, well, is that really retail AI?
Well, definitely. When you were talking about different procedures or cash. Yeah, and multifocal aisle exactly for ophthalmologists. It's one of the biggest purchases they're going to make in their career.
I mean, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, impacts their site for the rest of their lives. And so having a service that can talk to patients and ways that answer to all their questions that know something about them, that know something about the doctor, that can connect the doctor and patient and the procedure.
I use a huge opportunity and one that I'm actively exploring. I'm super excited about developments there. I, I, you and I need to work on that together because I am in the same boat. I think that's going to change not just the retail world that we're talking about since we're talking about retail AI.
I think it's going to change the entire patient experience. It's just going to be completely different. You know, it's funny. I was listening around about, I was listening to this podcast, I guess two mornings ago.
And it was about the retail world. It was the, the chief of innovation at Wendy's of all plays. I mean, a food place. Like, what are we going to get out of Wendy's?
We don't, we don't operate like Wendy's. And I thought, as I listened to this, I was like, oh, maybe we do. We're just selling a different kind of burgers. Yeah, that's it.
Right? Right. More expensive burgers and fries. But you know, he talked about the fact that there's been six identifiable major shifts in the retail world in the history of humanity.
That's, that's a long time. All right. And they said the lot three, the last three have all been in the last two decades. So all of you are listening in your lifetime, the three of the major, three of the major six shifts that's happened in the history of humanity have happened.
We moved from, from non digital to digital, right? The invention of the internet. And then we went from internet on a laptop, well, you know, laptops on a computer in a hard drive of a workstation to mobile. And now we can buy and shop anywhere we want.
At any time ever. And now we're seeing the last big shift, which is social. You know what I mean, TikTok shop is almost ready to overcome Amazon. That is in terms of in terms of sales.
That is absolutely mind blowing. I remember about three or four years, Jeff Bezos said that in 10 years, Amazon would have competition and would probably cease to exist. I'm like, oh, come on, it's Amazon. And then when I read that TikTok shop is about to pass Amazon worldwide, whoa, that's huge.
And then I think do we have the next step past that, which I don't know if we have a word for it, but is a genetic experiences, shopping experiences going to be the next version beyond social. I kind of think it is. Yeah, I think we all as an industry, better get our arms wrapped around. This is coming.
And we talked about this a couple weeks ago, and I see the future as being the agent that you wear. This is very futuristic. And this might be a decade away. Worst case scenario, I think.
You're going to have your heads up display, your glasses, your smart glasses, with their agent talking to you and sending stuff to you. Anytime you stop moving going, hey, I just want to let you know this golf, this new golf club came out. It's going to help you with your slice to your left. It's best prices.
You can get it from the shop in Ireland. They'll deliver to you overnight. They'll even engrave it. It can stop in Morocco and have it engraved and put it, it'll be here in three days.
My children, our children's lifetime ran, that's going to be shopping. There's going to be no department stores or malls or I'm not even sure the way Amazon and TikTok, you know, it's going to be just a different scenario. I, it's fascinating. Yeah, I'm the head of war, war memories of hang out and malls growing up.
And so I hope, there's not a mall here. How much of that was shopping? Come on, that was so true. That's right.
I hope there's something though. You know, that's romantic in me, wishing for things maybe of the past. But different, you know, that wordy thing, that actually in different retail environments, these are much more experiential. There are malls that are doing really well, but they're the ones that are giving you an experience.
I mean, like the massive ones that have a great food cord and ice skating, but those types of things, not the most likely. And they got virtual reality and, you know, little escape rooms and you're shopping in between your experiences. You're not having experience shopping. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I heard a great quote. I'll kind of end this unless you're someone else to add. It, come on.
It was a different podcast. I was listening to said, the pace of change has never in the history of man bend this fast. And it will never be this slow ever again. Powerful, powerful.
The total degree at the rate of change is, is fat is only getting faster. Is only getting faster. On that, we are, we try to stay on top of it. If you have any suggestions, feedback, ideas for future articles, please send us a note at rayhan at a i and iCare.ai or Scott, that's just one T at a i and iCare.ai.
Please check us out at our jobs and website at a i and iCare.com and I'll LinkedIn. Please don't forget to subscribe to our podcasts and like our content. We definitely pay attention to that. And you've been listening to real talk on a i and iCare, your weekly podcast to keep you informed about AI technologies revolutionizing iCare.