20 Oct 2026
Healthcare From the Eye: How AI Turns an Eye Exam Into Early Disease Detection | Dr. Rupe Hansra | EP 127
What if a single photo of the back of your eye could flag diabetes, heart disease, or Alzheimer's years before you ever felt a symptom?
In this episode of Remote First Innovators, Jake Gump sits down with Dr. Rupe Hansra, Optometrist and Vice President of Professional Affairs at Topcon Healthcare, for a practical conversation about oculomics, AI in healthcare, remote eye exams, connected care platforms, and keeping a multi-location practice running when the world shuts down.
Eye care has barely changed in almost a century. Rupe shows a photo of an exam room from 1933, and it looks nearly identical to the one you'd walk into today. But the retina is packed with blood vessels and nerves, and it offers a direct, non-invasive view of what is happening in the rest of the body.
That is the idea behind oculomics. A retinal image takes a fraction of a second to capture. When an AI model analyzes that image, a doctor gets a report within 30 to 60 seconds. The model checks dozens of biomarkers and compares them against millions of other eyes. Americans are far more likely to visit an eye doctor than a physician, so the eye exam could become the front door to the entire healthcare system.
In this episode, you'll discover:
Why an eye exam is much more than a glasses prescription
How optometrists, opticians, and ophthalmologists differ
How Rupe's team reopened 95% of their practices by June 2020
How a fully remote, comprehensive eye exam actually works
Why a sudden prescription change can be an early sign of diabetes
What oculomics is and how cloud computing and AI made it possible
How AI can spot details in a retinal image that no human can see
Why the doctor always stays in the loop with medical AI
Why eye care is a natural entry point for people living in healthcare deserts
How an AI model in development could predict 10-year risk of stroke and heart disease
How Topcon's Harmony platform works like an operating system for eye care devices
Why open, interoperable data could accelerate healthcare innovation
How subscription models could keep practices from getting stuck with outdated equipment
What the biggest obstacle is to making this the standard of care
What the eye exam of the next five to ten years could look like
Rupe trained as an optometrist, but his curiosity pulled him beyond the four walls of the exam room. He spent years in strategy and operations at LensCrafters, Target Optical, and VisionWorks. There he learned from leaders who came from Procter & Gamble, Nike, Accenture, and other major brands, and he helped build systems that improved care across entire fleets of practices.
Eventually he wanted to build equity of his own and step off the national-level treadmill for work he could see through from start to finish. He built and ran 20 practice locations across Seattle and Southern California. Then COVID hit. While others were told to close, Rupe's team relied on tools it already had in place: retinal imaging, telehealth, and a rebuilt online scheduling system. The old system took more clicks than buying a Tesla, and the new one lifted booking conversion by double digits. The first location reopened within two weeks, and about 95% were open by June, with doctors examining patients remotely from other states.
Today at Topcon Healthcare, he is helping build the connected care platform behind Healthcare from the Eye, working alongside partners including Microsoft.
His message is simple but powerful: the tools to catch disease earlier are already here. Practices that lay the right foundation now will be ready when turning on AI is as easy as flipping a switch.
About Remote First InnovatorsHosted by Jake Gump, Remote First Innovators features conversations with founders and experts on scaling distributed companies, from onboarding and IT to security, compliance, and the technology that keeps operations running.
🎙️ Listen to the full episode and discover how a s
