As a retinal specialist, Dr. Edward Chaum pores over hundreds of images of patients’ eyes a year, looking for diseases such as diabetic retinopathy, which can lead to blindness if not caught and treated early.
But what he sees coming in the future scares him: a predicted fivefold increase in diabetic patients over the next three decades, an onslaught of potentially diseased eyes – and not enough specialists to see them all.