Global Innovation Center

Reimagining the way eye care and eyewear are delivered to the world

Global Innovation Center

Reimagining the way eye care and eyewear are delivered to the world

The Global Innovation Center 

The VSP® Global Innovation Center (GIC) is VSP Vision's lens into the future.  

Through emerging technologies, new business exploration, and strategic connections within the innovation ecosystem, the Global Innovation Center is a hub for reimagining the way eye care and eyewear are delivered to the world.

This space highlights the GIC programs, events, and insights most relevant to your practice—such as the Futurist Report series, the Comprehensive Eye Exam Guide, and the AI Glossary to support providers working to integrate AI into their clinical workflows. 

For more updates, visit the GIC Blog, follow us on LinkedIn, and subscribe to our Lens into the Future newsletter. 
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Futurist Report Series

The VSP Global Innovation Center’s Futurist Report series is a collection of data-driven digital media offering forward-looking analyses of the trends and businesses shaping the future of healthcare, vision care, eyewear, and more. Past reports have been on The Future of Benefits, The Future of Generate AI in Healthcare, and the Future of Senses. 

VSP PEEK (Portable Eye Exam Kit)

When working in communities with limited access to care, every tool that helps providers reach patients where they are can make a significant difference. The VSP PEEK (Portable Eye Exam Kit) was designed with this challenge in mind. 

PEEK is a custom-built suite of next-gen optical technologies designed to help eye care professionals extend access to care in underserved areas. The kit, which fits inside of a lightweight carry-on suitcase, contains all the necessary technology and tools to deliver remote, asynchronous comprehensive eye exams. View an overview of the PEEK here.
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Access to Care Guide

For eye care providers, stepping into healthcare deserts represents both a profound opportunity and a meaningful responsibility. It can also be incredibly challenging. 

As part of an ongoing commitment to support and expand access to eye care, the Global Innovation Center has assembled the Access to Care Guide, an interactive collection of existing and new resources to help optometrists extend care into underserved communities. View the full guide here.

Lens Into the Future

The Global Innovation Center partnered with healthcare innovation accelerator MATTER to launch “Lens Into the Future,” a four-part virtual event series showcasing next-gen trends and technologies driving healthcare forward.

As healthcare rapidly transforms through AI, interconnected devices, hybrid platforms, and shifting consumer preferences, staying informed about these advancements is essential for both industry leaders and practitioners. Through the series, the GIC aims to highlight the interconnectedness of modern healthcare, where innovations in one specialty may spark advancements across the entire spectrum of patient care.

Learn more about the event series and watch recordings of past events here.
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Blog

A hub for the Global Innovation Center, featuring project spotlights, program announcements, event recaps, thought leadership and more! View the entire archives here.
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 VSP Vision Innovation Challenge Names 2026 Winners at Vision Expo

The winners were announced after the four finalists presented their solutions live on the Innovation Stage during Vision Expo, the optical industry’s largest gathering of vision care professionals and executives, on March 13 in Orlando. Read more here.
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How Providers are Leveraging the Influencer Ecosystem to Elevate the Patient Journey

The discussion investigated how providers are leveraging social platforms to offer patient education, advocacy, and direct access to care. Read more here.
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5 Key Trends from CES 2026

At the world’s most influential tech event, the Global Innovation Center explored the technologies and consumer behaviors shaping the next era of connected care. Read more here.


AI Glossary

As artificial intelligence continues to transform the vision care industry, providers are increasingly encountering AI-powered technologies from diagnostics to patient management systems. This glossary is designed to help you navigate AI’s evolving landscape as you decide whether to implement AI tools in your practice, communicate with vendors and partners, and review research publications and reports containing terms and concepts related to AI. 

  • View Glossary
    • AI Agents — A system or program that is capable of autonomously performing tasks on behalf of a user or another system.
    • AI Scribes — A software tool that uses speech-to-text technology and AI to transcribe conversations. 
    • Algorithm — The set of rules a machine follows to achieve a particular goal.  
    • Augmented reality — An enhanced version of reality created by the use of technology to overlay digital information on an image of something being viewed through a device (such as a smartphone camera). 
    • Artificial Intelligence — The capability of computer systems or algorithms to imitate intelligent human behavior. 
    • Chatbot — A computer program designed to converse with human beings. 
    • ChatGPT — An AI chatbot developed by OpenAI that uses natural language processing to create humanlike conversational dialogue. It can respond to questions and compose various types of written content, including articles, social media posts, essays, code, and emails.  
    • Conversational AI — Technologies, such as chatbots or virtual agents, that users can talk to. They use large volumes of data, machine learning, and natural language processing to help imitate human interactions by recognizing speech and text inputs and translating their meanings across various languages. 
    • Data mining — The practice of searching through large amounts of computerized data to find useful patterns or trends. 
    • Deep learning — A form of machine learning in which the computer network rapidly teaches itself to understand a concept without human intervention by performing a large number of iterative calculations on an extremely large dataset. 
    • Generative AI — Artificial intelligence that is capable of generating new content (such as images or text) in response to a submitted prompt (such as a query) by learning from a large reference database of examples. 
    • GPT — An abbreviation for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer,” GPT is an AI model designed to generate human-like text based on input prompts.  
    • Hallucination — A plausible but false or misleading response generated by an artificial intelligence algorithm. 
    • Large language model — A language model that utilizes deep methods on an extremely large data set as a basis for predicting and constructing natural-sounding text. 
    • Machine learning — A computational method that is a subfield of artificial intelligence and enables a computer to learn to perform tasks by analyzing a large dataset without being explicitly programmed. 
    • Natural language processing — A subfield of AI that uses machine learning to help computers understand and communicate with human language. 
    • Neural network — A computer architecture in which a number of processors are interconnected in a manner suggestive of the connections between neurons in a human brain and which is able to learn by a process of trial and error. 
    • Oculomics — The study of the eye as a window into overall health using ophthalmic biomarkers to diagnose and predict systemic diseases.  
    • Open AI — A San Francisco-based AI research organization and the developer of ChatGPT. 
    • Parameters — The variables that an AI model learns during training. 
    • Prompts — The text, images, or audio a user provides to an AI model to elicit a specific response. 
    • Prompt Engineering — The process of designing and optimizing prompts to guide AI models towards generating the desired responses.  
    • Quantum computing— A computer that takes advantage of the quantum properties of qubits to perform certain types of calculation extremely quickly compared to conventional computers. 
    • Voice recognition — A deep learning technique used to identify, distinguish, and authenticate a person’s voice. 

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