Zach wanted to prevent childhood blindness. Now his sights are set on millions of patients

November 7, 2026 — 6:00am

It was there in plain sight for Dr Zachary Tan.

A career in medicine? Or in technology? Enrolling in the University of Queensland’s School of Medicine, he pursued a field that would satisfy both his passions.

“I’m a huge nerd,” Tan says.

“I was always drawn to ophthalmology because of the large role technology has to play in transforming that area of medicine, both in how we diagnose and treat eye diseases.

“But like so many areas of healthcare, the challenge of ophthalmology is really around access.”

A little more than a decade after accepting his graduation certificate, Tan now sits at the helm of a company that’s raised $US50 million, and has ambitions to revolutionise access to eye care and retinal disease detection.

Tan is speaking from his apartment in New York, where he splits his time between Brisbane.

“One of my favourite anecdotes that I like to share with my American colleagues is Queensland is 2½ times the size of Texas.

“People with eye diseases don’t just live in Brisbane; they’re spread all throughout the state,” he says.

“And something I’ve been so passionate about since my medical school days is: how can we use technology to really democratise access to ophthalmology services?”

Tan hasn’t wasted time trying to answer that question.

While studying, he helped develop an AI algorithm to screen for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), a disorder that can cause blindness in premature babies.

The project centred on bringing screening services to patients, particularly in remote areas, rather than requiring them to travel to specialists.

This idea became the genesis for Optain Health, a global medical device and software company that uses AI to screen for common retinal diseases, including glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration and cardiovascular disease.

Since Tan co-founded the company three years ago, its screening tool is now installed in 500 sites around the world, including Queensland.

“In the past 12 months, we screened 150,000 patients and 20,000 patients with some form of disease,” he says.

“I think the potential is huge for AI in healthcare … and one of the things that I feel really passionate about is clinicians having a front-row seat in shaping how we use AI in healthcare.”

When Tan joined UQ’s School of Medicine – an institution that recently celebrated its 90th year – AI was an esoteric concept in contrast to its modern application. But even back then, Tan says the school fostered “a feeling of possibility”.

“You could build technology or do research and not just have that be in a lab, but able to translate, from bench-to-bedside,” he explains.

“And 2010 was really when we started to see the incredible impacts of Gardasil, the HPV [human papillomavirus] vaccine, which was invented at UQ.

“You’d have your professors and teachers giving lectures, but these were the same people who had functionally now cured cervical cancer.”

Tan likens Optain’s tabletop screening tool to an Oculus, the headsets used to create virtual reality. Inside is a fast-working robotic camera that can capture retinal images in less than a minute.

“Based off these images, we have specially trained AI, which has been approved by the TGA [Therapeutic Goods Administration], which can look at the different features in the image to provide us with a diagnosis at the point of care.”

About a week ago, former Wallabies captain and prominent eye surgeon Dr Mark Loane visited Tan in New York, peering into the device to test the technology for himself.

Loane, another UQ alumnus, has spent more than 40 years treating eye conditions, and is renowned for his work in regional and remote Queensland.

In 2014, Tan introduced Loane when he presented UQ’s Errol Solomon Meyers Memorial Lecture – a reflection on 20 years of remote eye health.

“In the 1980s we had the digital revolution, and ophthalmology itself really benefited from all of that,” Loane says.

“Much of the resolution of problems has already been invented, so now it’s about how do you roll out those delivery systems to people all over country … to provincial areas of Queensland or Australia?

“[Zachary] has come a long way from 2014 … to meeting again, where he is starting to wrestle with many of the questions which I asked in that lecture about how we deliver services to populations of people and in remote areas. It’s a wondrous closing of circles.”

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.

From our partners