Dr. Abdulaziz Al Rajhi, CEO of King Khalid Eye Specialist Hospital, spoke to Al Madina about the King Khalid Eye Specialist Hospital International Conference 2024 and the most prominent and latest developments that have been achieved in the diagnosis and treatment of eye disease. He said that the conference is scientific and specific to ophthalmology, and is completely different from other conferences. We do not meet to discuss one issue. We have many sessions, and each session specializes in a specific disease or condition, and this is what makes us come up with unified recommendations, but in every session there is a discussion and decisions or points are agreed upon. It is discussed among colleagues, but its results always come in the end, in the interest of developing ophthalmology and developing eye health care. Regarding the most important thing that was focused on in this conference, Al-Rajhi says that the most important thing that was focused on in this conference and that concerns us as doctors, and the focus on it is always weak, as the focus was on artificial intelligence. Everyone knows that artificial intelligence has played a major role in health care and also in various areas of life. Al-Rajhi adds that one of the things that was focused on at the conference was setting up dialogue discussion sessions between trainers and trainees to try to find out the challenging points as well. Capturing what could be reformed and improving training methods. The audience also participated in an enriching discussion. We held a session for personal experiences, which is known to only come about through direct discussion. This session was for four people who had rich experiences in various fields of eye care, between nursing and… Doctors and other specialties. Each of them reported to us three or four points he learned during his professional career, and we benefited from this by establishing a mutual dialogue between them and including the audience with them in the dialogue, who shared their experiences with them, and in the end. Everyone benefited from new ideas and principles that he could apply in his life.
Dr. Abdulaziz also spoke about the “My Eyes” program and said that it is the first medical program that uses artificial intelligence, not only for eyes, but in all medical programs. He said that it was made from scratch by Saudi hands. We started this program in partnership with Sdaya and with Leen Company, and recently we entered with Skype to Marketing and advertising for it, and regarding the beginning of the announcement of the work of this program, Al-Rajhi says that it will be announced after a few months after final experiments are conducted to know and measure the accuracy of the program and obtain approval from the Food and Drug Authority to use and market the program. Then start working on it, God willing.
Al-Rajhi talked about the hackathon and said that it was the first time that a hackathon was held in ophthalmology in the region. He said that it was organized over three days in partnership with Sdaya, and its results were very good, although we were surprised by the number of applications that reached 600 applications to participate, and 15 teams were selected from them. Three teams won the first three places and were supported by financial prizes.
Al-Rajhi concluded his speech by expressing his thanks to the city for covering the event over three days and this dialogue, wishing everyone success.
