Artificial Intelligence (AI) Reveals Ethnic Disparities in Cataract Detection and Treatment

The aim of this work is to identify patients at risk of limited access to healthcare through artificial intelligence using a name-ethnicity classifier (NEC) analyzing the clinical stage of cataract at diagnosis and preoperative visual acuity. This retrospective, cross-sectional study includes patients seen in the cataract clinic of a tertiary care hospital between September 2017 and February 2020 with subsequent cataract surgery in at least one eye. We analyzed 4971 patients and 8542 eyes undergoing surgery. The NEC identified 360 patients with names classified as ‘non-German’ compared to 4611 classified as ‘German’. Advanced cataract (7 vs. 5