Has the pandemic foreshadowed a permanent shift toward telehealth in ophthalmology?

Mark Breazzano, MD: I think so for sure. I mean, as the aging baby boomer population, the specialist shortage that we can certainly expect and the need for retina increasing, I think, there's certainly the possibility of ,like you just mentioned, a foreshadowing of telehealth really taking hold. And even other sort of tele- anything is probably increasing as well, I think we could expect an increase in hybrid meetings, for example, with our professional organizations getting together, where there's a combination of sort of in person as well as virtual meetings, just even to talk as colleagues and clinicians and researchers about what we're doing, and even this kind of modality right now. And so I think even just from practicing everyday retina, to keeping up with the current practices and research within the field, I think remote work is definitely going to take a strong foothold.

But I think people are missing sort of in person at the same time. So, you know, I think there's definitely pros and cons to, to both ways, of course, so I think we'll probably learn how to adjust and tweak accordingly as we move forward.

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