Do you ever call up your friends to ask for advice on a complicated patient case? Well, imagine if your friends were the top minds in their specialties – from Dr. Paul Karpecki advising you on ocular surface disease to Dr. Joseph Sowka, the founder and Chair of the Neuro-ophthalmic Disorders in Optometry Special Interest Group for the American Academy of Optometry talking you through a complicated neuro case. That’s the premise behind Telasight, a new start-up that connects optometrists with a team of consultants to help triage and talk through your most difficult cases, available on call to you whenever you need them. We sit down with one of the founders of this new service, Dr. Ian McWherter, a 2012 graduate of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University and the current Head of Optometric Telemedicine and Emerging Technology at the Kentucky College of Optometry.

Drs. Darryl Glover, Jennifer Lyerly, and Ian McWherter

The mission of Telasight is to help you manage more of the difficult cases that walk through your office door every day. “If a patient’s in your chair; treat them,” Dr. McWherter states. But he understands that optometrists can’t be experts on every subspeciality that the profession serves and that’s where being able to consult with a team of experts in real time can make a huge difference. His goal in founding Telasight was to help doctors treat more medical eye disease and embrace the scope of practice and care that we have been trained to deliver. Medical eyecare is an increasingly unmet need in many communities across the country, especially as we face a future with significant shortages of MDs pursuing ophthalmology.  “The amount of eyecare needed in the US, ophthalmologists can’t handle it,” McWherter explains. “Optometry needs to step in and that’s where we can help.”

We’d like to take a moment to thank Dr. McWherter and his team at Telasight for offering a discount for Defocus Media listeners. Use code DEFOCUS10 to enjoy 10% off your monthly subscription FOREVER!