Can artificial intelligence be used to improve the quality of vision in patients with amblyopia? The first digital pill in medicine administered under AI

We live in an ever-increasing digital world, digital applications and diagnostics are part and parcel of everyday clinical practice, particularly in Ophthalmology. All previous digital applications have been directed to improving our diagnostic capabilities but now, for the first time there is a digital pill. This is not a digitally activated/tracked pharmaceutical [1], this is a digital treatment per se, one designed to recover visual function in later life that had been lost in childhood. The neural substrate for this is residual neural plasticity present after the early critical period for visual development. There appear to be two pathways, a bottom-up one that is reliant on the appropriate dichoptic stimulation [2] while the other is a top-down one from higher brain areas that involves attention [3–5]. Treatment efficacy depends on activation of both pathways and there is an important role for AI in ensuring that attention is fully engaged for the duration of the bottom-up stimulation which is administered on a videogaming platform suitable for engaging young children.