Launched from Topcon Healthcare, Oku Combines AI, Retinal Imaging, and Connected Clinical Data to Identify Disease Risk Earlier and Route Patients to the Right Care

LA JOLLA, Calif. — Following its global launch from Topcon Healthcare, Inc., Oku Digital Health, Inc. (“Oku”) today unveiled its Connected Care solution across a connected network of more than 10,000 provider locations. Oku enables primary care, optometry, and ophthalmology clinicians to detect early systemic and ocular disease signals during routine visits and refer high-risk patients to the right point of care.

The need for earlier identification and intervention extends across the healthcare system. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 60% of U.S. adults aged 18-34 years have at least one chronic condition. This number rises to more than 90% among adults aged 65 years and older.¹

Many ocular and systemic diseases can progress before patients experience symptoms. Advances in retinal imaging and AI are creating new opportunities to identify signs of disease and health risk during routine care. Non-invasive eye imaging can reveal microscopic changes before symptoms develop. This creates a window for early intervention in conditions such as diabetic retinopathy and other causes of vision loss, as well as cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, and stroke risk. It also offers insight into a patient’s biological age.² ³

Oku transforms the eye into an accessible front door for whole-body health.

Closing Care Gaps in Primary Care and Eye Care

Through a simple point-of-care retinal exam, primary care and comprehensive eye care practices can capture retinal images during routine patient visits and receive AI insights to help diagnose and triage patients. This enables rapid identification of high-risk patients while establishing bidirectional co-management loops, increasing clinical value, improving patient retention, helping reduce downstream care costs, and supporting performance on HEDIS measures such as Eye Exam for Patients With Diabetes (EED).

Diabetic retinopathy screening demonstrates this value in practice. In America, 1.84 million people have vision-threatening disease, yet up to 90% of vision loss is preventable with early detection and treatment.⁴ ⁵ To date, Oku has screened more than 2.2 million patients outside of eye care, surfacing more than 590,000 suspected pathology findings and more than 57,000 high-risk candidates for eye care referral.

“Primary care practices face a significant operational burden in closing quality care gaps, while eye care practices are looking for ways to expand their clinical role and strengthen patient relationships,” said Ali Tafreshi, Chief Executive Officer, Oku Digital Health, Inc. “Oku connects point-of-care screening, clinical data, and referral pathways directly into routine workflows. By identifying high-risk patients earlier and connecting them to the right level of care, we can help improve quality-measure performance, expand patient access, and reduce unnecessary clinical burden.”

Supporting Eye Care Specialists Across Complex Ocular Pathways

Uncoordinated referrals strain specialty practices treating complex conditions like glaucoma, wet AMD, and cataracts. Through Harmony, Oku brings imaging and clinical data together and applies AI-enabled clinical decision dashboards to help comprehensive eye care providers distinguish lower-risk cases that may be managed locally from higher-risk patients who warrant specialist evaluation.

“By bringing retinal imaging and clinical data together, Oku gives clinicians a more complete view of patient risk,” said Dr. Daniela Ferrara, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, Oku Digital Health, Inc. “This helps comprehensive eye care providers manage appropriate lower-risk patients locally while ensuring that high-risk patients who may require advanced medical or surgical intervention are identified and referred to specialists earlier.”

Oku will make its trade show debut at the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, October 9 to 12, 2026. Attendees can meet the Oku team and explore its solutions within the Topcon Healthcare booth at AAO (1737). Learn more about the launch of Oku Digital Health here, and its pharma solutions here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How does Oku Digital Health support primary care providers?

A: Oku enables primary care practices to capture retinal images during routine visits and receive AI-supported insights or remote interpretation from an appropriately licensed clinician, including autonomous AI diabetic retinopathy results. This helps identify high-risk patients who may require eye care evaluation and enables direct referral to the appropriate provider. For practices that prefer not to perform screening onsite, Oku’s connected network can route patients to participating local eye care providers for screening, with results delivered back into the primary care workflow. This helps close care gaps, identify high-risk patients earlier, and support performance on measures such as HEDIS EED and Medicare Advantage Star Ratings.

Q: How does Oku Digital Health support comprehensive eye care providers?

A: Oku uses connected clinical data and AI-enabled decision support dashboards to help comprehensive eye care providers distinguish lower-risk patients who can be managed locally from high-risk patients who may require specialist evaluation. This supports more efficient triage, strengthens co-management with primary care, and helps ensure that patients who need advanced medical or surgical treatment are referred appropriately.

Q: How does Oku Digital Health support eye care specialists?

A: Oku helps deliver higher-confidence referrals of high-risk patients from primary care and comprehensive eye care providers directly to specialists, together with relevant imaging and clinical information. This helps specialists focus their capacity on patients who are more likely to require complex or advanced treatment.

Q: What does Oku Digital Health’s AI detect?

A: Oku’s AI-supported workflow analyzes retinal images for signs associated with cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, hypertension, diabetic retinopathy, and other sight-threatening eye diseases, such as glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration. To date, Oku’s network has surfaced more than 590,000 suspected pathologies among over 2.2 million patients.

Q: Does Oku Digital Health only work with Topcon devices?

A: No. Oku tightly integrates with Topcon devices, but its solutions are device-agnostic and supports imaging from multiple manufacturers. This enables eye care practices to securely bring together data across their technology ecosystem in the cloud, while creating a scalable real-world data foundation for clinical care and research.

About Oku Digital Health
Oku Digital Health, Inc. is an AI-powered digital health company headquartered in La Jolla, Calif., that connects eye insights to whole-body care. Launched from Topcon Healthcare, Inc. in 2026, Oku unites a connected network of more than 10,000 care locations, leverages Topcon’s global installed base of 50,000+ diagnostic devices, and has screened over 2.2 million patients outside of traditional eye care. Built on Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure and optimized for AI workloads with NVIDIA CUDA libraries, Oku helps healthcare providers, researchers, and life sciences partners unlock the full clinical value of ophthalmic data.

Learn more at www.okuglobal.com

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements about Oku’s plans, products, technologies, business integration, and growth. Words such as “will,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “may,” and similar expressions identify these statements. They reflect Oku’s current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks related to regulatory clearance and oversight of Oku’s products, the integration of recently combined businesses, Oku’s ability to obtain and use data in compliance with law and contract, its commercial relationships with Topcon and other partners, market acceptance, cybersecurity and data privacy, and competition. Oku undertakes no obligation to update these statements, except as required by law.

MEDIA CONTACT

Jamie Allyn
MERGE for Oku Digital Health, Inc.
[email protected]
www.okuglobal.com/in-the-news

References

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About chronic diseases. Updated May 14, 2026. Accessed September 29, 2026. https://www.cdc.gov/chronic-disease/about/index.html
2. Zhu Z, Wang Y, Qi Z, et al. Oculomics: Current Concepts and Evidence. Progress in Retinal and Eye Research. 2025;106:101350. doi:10.1016/j.preteyeres.2025.101350
3. Zhou Y, Chia MA, Wagner SK, et al. A foundation model for generalizable disease detection from retinal images. Nature. 2023;622:1-8. doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06555-x
4. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. VEHSS modeled estimates: prevalence of diabetic retinopathy (DR). Updated May 15, 2024. Accessed September 29, 2026. https://www.cdc.gov/vision-health-data/prevalence-estimates/dr-prevalence.html
5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Why eye exams are important. Updated May 15, 2024. Accessed September 29, 2026. https://www.cdc.gov/vision-health/about-eye-disorders/why-eye-exams-are-important.html