Charles N. J. McGhee

Maurice Paykel Professor and Chair of Ophthalmology, Director of the New Zealand National Eye Centre, University of Auckland, New Zealand

What industry trends are catching your attention right now?

Extended depth-of-focus (EDOF) intraocular lenses have made major advances in improving distance and intermediate to near vision, without the aberrations associated with traditional multifocal lenses, making them more suitable for the cataract patient who doesn't mind occasional near correction with minimal night time symptoms.

What is a little-known fact about you?

If it hadn’t been for the excellent and inspiring mentorship of two ocular pathologists, William Lee (Scotland) and Dan Albert (Boston), I might have left medicine as an undergraduate to pursue a career in music rather than as a surgeon and vision scientist.

If you weren’t an ophthalmologist, what would you be doing instead?

I have always enjoyed the arts and continue to dabble in art, sculpting and painting, as well as enjoying a lifelong interest in rock and blues electric guitar – so I may have oscillated between art and music if I had not been drawn to the siren call of ophthalmology.

How do you think AI and machine learning will impact ophthalmology?

A combination of ocular imaging and AI analysis together will replace many of the more common aspects of clinical ophthalmology within five years, and I fully expect robotic surgery will replace the cataract surgeon within a decade!