And I think a lot of practices particularly settle in with their technology and then they just carry that for the whole career of their doctors. And that can be a very difficult position to hold in this particular cyber world that we live in.

Host: That's an interesting perspective, I must say, especially because technology investment is ultimately about turning those priorities into actions. So, moving ahead, Jeff, you joined Sightview Software in August 2025 as its CTO. What has been your approach to advancing the firm's goals to innovate its solutions and overall growth?

Jeff: So, I like to think of my role as the machinery that delivers the strategy of the organization. And that covers a lot of different aspects of the organization itself. So, I do cover both IT and security from just a baseline perspective, but also our operations, our DevOps organization, development itself, and QA. So, there's a lot of elements that go into that machinery, if you will, of delivering on the strategy. So, my focus over the last year has largely been around building the right talent pool, getting our processes aligned with the needs of the organization, and then automating out some of the toil. The organization when I joined was spending a good amount of time on technical debt remediation as well as in how we deploy our software.

So, we've been really focused over the last year in automating out a lot of that overhead so that we can continue to focus in and show that growth that our customers are looking for.

Host: Yeah, you're surely leading the tech part of the company, I must say. So, that brings us to one of the technologies that the center of modern eyecare. Why has the adoption of electronic health records and practice management systems became critical for eyecare organizations in 2026? And what operational, clinical, and business advantages do these platforms provide?

Jeff: This also breaks down in a number of different ways. From a challenges perspective, staff costs are increasing. So, the cost of hiring resources directly can be very expensive, and that isn't going to decrease anytime soon would be my expectation.

The other thing that's interesting is that a lot more private equity and venture capital funding is pouring into the healthcare space. And what that's leading to is much more complex healthcare organizations. We used to think of hospitals as being very complex, but practices as being quite simple.

You might have a doctor or two, some support staff, a biller, a front desk person, and an office manager. And then maybe they outsourced IT or a friend of the family might be running their IT. And that classic pattern of a small doctor's office is becoming extremely rare.

And without something like an electronic health record system and practice management systems such as Sightview offers, it can be very, very challenging to provide the metrics and the detail to run that business effectively for folks that are now looking at it as an investment instead of as just a healthcare experience. But at the same time, their customers, their patients, if you want to think of them as customers, have certain expectations that really didn't align with the old style of paper charts and a book that had a schedule in it. Now they're looking to schedule online.

They're looking to pay their bills online. They're looking to be able to reach out at any hour of the day and potentially know that they can see the doctor the next day. And that just isn't really practical if the only time you can interact with your doctor's office is during the hours that they're open.

So, I think EHR side, it's about saving time because profitability is really a function of how much the patient throughput of the organization can be handled efficiently. And that helps a lot with an EHR or EMR, depending on how you look at it. And then from a practice management perspective, getting those metrics, that overview, the ability to see where they're spending their time, their money, and helping the staff focus on the things that are truly important like the patient's experience, and getting them away from being on the phone with insurance companies or chasing patient payments.

And I think those come together in the technology that we holistically call practice management and the EHR, but it really has become a much more complex endeavor than it ever was in the past.

Host: Yeah, clearly these platforms can address several parts of the practice workflow, but technology also needs to respond to the challenges providers are facing on the ground. So, our next question is, what are the key challenges eyecare providers face today? Which technologies do optometrists and ophthalmologists use to overcome these challenges and provide better services?

Jeff: Yeah, and expanding that somewhat from my previous answer, I think many of the complexities are in the regulatory space, as the US government continues to increase regulations over the healthcare experience. An aging population, which is somewhat counter to the desire of the practice to automate everything and make everything high-tech, low-touch. And then add in that the communication with a patient can be very staff-intensive, meaning to pick up the phone and call someone.

Today it's very common that if you don't recognize the phone number, you're going to send them to voicemail, that there are regulations around what you can send by text, what you can send by email, things of that nature. And it can really complicate their day-to-day lives as an owner of a practice trying to just do their business, if that makes sense. And the way that the technologies that we've developed at Sightview and that you'll see holistically in the market today help is that it's much more common now that you do electronic claims.

No more mailing forms and or faxing forms into insurance companies, having integrated payments so that you can collect a payment when the person's in the office and it immediately applies to their account. It immediately is tracked. They don't need to take those extra steps.

It used to be very common that you would have a vendor for your payments, and then you'd have a vendor for your practice management. And those two things didn't really talk to each other. Instead, you would say, oh, the total in one system is, say, $100.

You'd run your credit card, and then you have to enter information from that receipt back into the system, save the receipt, and carry that paper with you for a really long time. Now you can do that all electronically. It happens automatically in the background, making that a much more seamless interaction with the patient.

And that extends to a number of different things. Integrated payments is just one example. But thinking on the patient communication side, it's really easy these days to go ahead and automate a call to someone or to go ahead and send them a text message to let them know they have a balance and allow them to pay.

And that can really shorten that time-to-pay aspect, which is a really important metric for the profitability of an organization as well.

Host: Totally agreed. And as more of these clinical and operational processes become digital, the question of protecting that technology becomes even more important. So, our next question is, with cyber-attacks on healthcare organizations becoming more frequent and complex, what strategic measures and security best practices are essential for building a resilient defense framework?

Jeff: That's a tough one, to be completely honest. In this day and age, with all of the attack vectors that exist and the number of vendors that all of our practices generally have- because they generally do have dozens now, where in the past you might see one or two vendors with a more paper-based organization- the amount of areas that can be attacked is much higher. And I think that it kind of breaks down into two main areas.

One is staff. You still need to train your staff. The human element is still one of the weakest links in the chain.

If an attacker can convince a human being to take an action that they'd like them to take or provide them with information that they can then leverage down the road, that can be a weakness that can be exploited at any level of the healthcare supply chain. So that one's the primary one. The next part is really about layers of security, right?

Having the right protections at your network layer, at your borders with the internet, at the different vendor levels. Are you actually taking the time to evaluate, not only does this vendor offer you a nice value proposition, but are they able to prove that they're protected and safe and that your data and your access will be protected and safe as well? And I think that those elements, that isn't something that is taught to doctors, right?

When they're in school, they learn how to doctor. They may learn a little bit about how to run a business, but for the most part they learn that on the fly. And that can be really challenging for healthcare organizations at small scale because they can't really bring in experts at every level when they're just getting started.

And so we've seen a lot of folks that want to work with us to understand the landscape as part of the sales process. And I think that's an interesting dynamic that we'll see grow as we continue down this path. They're not just interested in a vendor that's willing to provide their technology, but also looking for a vendor that can help partner and help them protect themselves and their patients as well.

And I think that that plays out in a number of different ways in the market, but the primary one being that it's no longer just a, you have a vendor, they sell you a product and walk away. It's now a lifetime partnership that you actually work together on.

Host: Yeah, those are important defensive measures, but to build a truly resilient security strategy, organizations also need to understand what is driving the attacks in the first place. So, according to you, what are the key factors responsible for surging cyber-attacks against healthcare organizations? Additionally, how have emerging technologies such as AI enabled threat actors to execute more sophisticated and targeted attacks?

Jeff: I think in answer to your first question about, you know, why would they even bother with a healthcare company, right? It's two elements. Cyber criminals are almost always looking for money.

They're not doing it for fun. It's a business to them. And unfortunately, healthcare information is particularly valuable.

If an attack comes in that encrypts that the data as an example, and the practice can no longer access their patient health information, that can lead to canceling appointments, canceling surgeries, which immediately impact the incoming revenues of the organization, which many of these organizations only have revenues that support them month to month because of their staff outlays and things of that nature. They can't generally afford a zero income for an extended period of time and survive as a business.

That in itself very much amps up the willingness of a ransomware attack victim to pay money. So there's a built-in pressure, if you will, in healthcare that can be easily leveraged by a cybercriminal to go ahead and get that money out of a system because they just can't afford the downtime. And that's a balancing act that the cybercriminals are well aware of.

The other aspect is if they can get their hands on the source data itself, they can leverage that for social attacks on any of the patients or even their patients' extended families because they have enough information to be able to convince those folks that they are from an insurance company or from the doctor's office. And most human beings will trust them because they've reinforced their belief, right? I did see that doctor on this date.

I did have a charge. It's a very self-fulfilling prophecy from their perspective. And that trust level can be extremely damaging because it's hard to stop once the information is out there.

And then finally, because of that trust, if they can exfiltrate health information and even without committing to performing the social engineering attacks themselves, they can go ahead and sell that to other social engineering groups for a good amount of money. So, the profitability in the healthcare space for cyber criminals, it can be potentially high. And there's enough pressure to convince people to go ahead and pay them the money.

And then I think the interesting thing is the effect of AI in the short term. What we're seeing is it used to be that we trained our staff and others to look for signs in emails or text messages that were such as misspellings, improper grammar, sentence structures that we wouldn't normally use because oftentimes the attacks were in a second language. So, there wasn't the primary language.

And that has become no longer a telltale sign because AI can produce a very, very effective copy for these attacks that can not only make the language very appropriate to the situation, but even the branding and the subtle cues that might have been used in the past to detect it are no longer a surefire way to tell what's happening there. So, I think the AI aspect isn't that it's opening doors to new types of attack, it's making the attacks more successful that have existed for a long time.

Host: Yeah, that really highlights how quickly the technology sector is changing both for defenders and attackers. Next up, Sightview introduced two advanced tools at Vision Expo 2026, namely Sightview Pay and Sightview Patient Engagement. How do these tools advance appellate electronic health record and practice management?

Jeff: Thank you. Yes, we're really, really excited about those offerings to the marketplace. I'll take them one at a time.

In the case of Sightview Pay, the value is a few different areas. One is they get to have one less vendor. We talked a little bit earlier about vendor sprawl and the risk to cyber as well as just generally a risk to the operations of a business.

So having one less vendor can really just help with their operational position. But even more important than that, the ability to go ahead and say run a card and have it automatically track it in their practice management system to the right account on the day with all the records that they need to keep gets them away from paper receipts, it gets them away from needing to collect the signatures in the way that they used to, and it really streamlines their operation. As we continue to grow functionalities in that area, we'll be introducing even more opportunities for them to save time in their practice as well.

And we look forward to getting that in place in the coming months. In the case of patient engagement, oftentimes practices will have either a part-time person that does pick up the phone and call their patients to remind them about their appointments upcoming, or maybe even a full-time depending on the size. And that's a big cost given the cost of staff these days.

And also, that staff member could probably be used in other ways that might be more beneficial to the practice. So, by taking the patient engagement aspects, automating all of the outreach to the patients in the way the patient would like to receive it, so that could be by email, it could be by text, it could be by voice, and move that off of a human being and into a more predictable manner. It also streamlines their cost there, but the final part is that it feeds it right back into the system.

So as an example, let's say that a patient goes ahead and declines an appointment. They had something come up, they're not able to go ahead and do it. That appointment immediately frees up in the calendar so that they can go ahead and rebook it, where a lot of times what was happening pre-patient engagement releases is that they would often not really know.

They'd have a higher level of no-shows, and no-shows directly impact their profitability. So having that ability to keep their calendars full for all their doctors can be really, really beneficial as well.

Host: Yeah, it's indeed interesting to know how the focus is moving beyond clinical documentation toward the entire patient and practice experience.

Jeff: We like to think of it as meeting the patient where they are. If the patient really is inclined to answer a phone call and they want the phone call, we're happy to do that. If they're more of a text-based person, happy to do that as well.

And meeting them where they are can really remove some of that friction as they think about the burden of going to a doctor.

Host: Yeah, totally agreed. So, our last question is, what is the future of eyecare and which technologies or trends can we anticipate dominating the industry in the upcoming decade?

Jeff: Decade is a long time right now. I think it's a really great question and one that no one's got the perfect crystal ball for. So, I can make some speculations here.

I think telehealth in the eyecare industry is going to start to show up more and more. There's a few companies that are starting to roll out kiosk-based eyecare, primarily more around optometry, so your eyeglasses and your contact lenses. But we're even seeing some traction in the ophthalmic area as well, being able to have a doctor that's, say, located in New York but treating a patient that's located in Texas purely through the fact that there's a technician and remote accessible equipment in that location.

And then the doctor in the other location can see real-time visualizing, say, the back of the eye and the slit lamp exam. So, in those cases, I think that's going to be really interesting, especially for groups that have historically needed to be in many, many places. If you think about eye exams in malls and big shop centers and things of that nature, that's a big staffing effort today because you need to have a doctor, you need to have a technician, and you need to have, obviously, the inventory.

The inventory being the key to the sale. But if you could staff less doctors and less technicians, that would be a great savings to the overall operations and keep the experience for the patient very, very high as well. So, I think that we'll see that one developing.

I think that AI is probably the wild card at the moment. We know it can do a lot of different things. I do think that finding the right business case that's both beneficial to the patient and to the business is going to be the trick.

And I have no doubt that we will find many use cases for it in the coming decade. It's just a question of what is going to be and I really don't have a great answer for that. AI is growing month over month so fast right now, it's very, very hard to predict where it's going to be in 10 years.

But I have to say I'm really excited about seeing where it's going. And then I think the last point that I'd want to make is really the business side of it. So, I think we're going to continue to see consolidation up to a certain point, and then we'll probably see deconsolidation.

Consolidation is generally cyclical. Over a 10-year window, I would expect that we'll see a lot of consolidation and then we'll see a reaction to that consolidation where we'll start to split back to mom and pop type operations, but at a higher technology level than we've seen in the past. That one's probably my most speculative of the items that we just talked about, but I do think that we will see that because I think what will end up happening is that the technology will become more and more accessible at a price point that can be afforded by smaller businesses.

Then it will pivot back to the patient experience and the patient experience with your mom and pop kind of model for the practice is usually a higher positive than the current, more commercialized medicine model.

Host: Yeah, that was an amazing perspective, I must say. So that's a quite great point to wrap up today's conversation. Jeff, thank you so much for sharing your perspectives on eyecare, technology, security, and future of eyecare.

So, it was a pleasure to host you. Thank you.

Jeff: Thank you so much. It has been a lot of fun having this discussion and I look forward to speaking to you again in the future.

Host: And to our viewers, thank you for tuning in to this episode of ExtraMile by WisdomPlexus. We'll be back with more insightful discussions with industry leaders and experts. Until then, stay tuned.