Summary: Tien Yin Wong’s connection to WISER Optomed (China)
Wong is a lead author of the CHARM study (China Alliance of Research in High Myopia), specifically the original protocol article (BMJ Open, December 2023, PMC10753734). The author list includes: Hai-Long He, Yi-Xin Liu, Hao Song, Tian-Ze Xu, Tien-Yin Wong (affiliations: Tsinghua Medicine, Duke-NUS, Singapore Eye Research Institute), and Zi-Bing Jin (Beijing Tongren Hospital, corresponding author and initiator of CHARM).
Optomed’s own Scientific Advisory Board member, Daniel Ting, has directly co-authored a groundbreaking article in the field with Wong: “A deep learning algorithm to detect chronic kidney disease from retinal photographs in community-based populations” (Lancet Digital Health, 2020). The list of authors also includes Yih-Chung Tham and Ya Xing Wang – the same individuals who are also co-authors with Wong in a JAMA Ophthalmology article. The same Singapore Eye Research Institute-based research group is thus recurring both on Optomed’s Scientific Advisory Board (Ting) and behind all the CKD-retina-AI and Tsinghua connections – no longer just “the same broad field,” but the same named group of authors.
On June 23, 2026, the “CHARM Guangdong Provincial Sub-Center” was opened in Guangzhou, with core technology partners WISER Optomed (Optomed’s Aurora camera) and EVisionAI, hosted by the Guangzhou First People’s Hospital. In this same press release, Zi-Bing Jin (“initiator of the CHARM alliance”) was quoted directly – the same person who is Wong’s co-author in the CHARM protocol.
Therefore, Wong is not directly a partner of Optomed or WISER, but he is one of the scientific architects of its national research network (CHARM), whose first provincial expansion (Guangdong) is now physically powered by Optomed’s own equipment via a commercial joint venture. This is an institutional/scientific connection through the same national program – not a direct business relationship between Wong and Optomed/WISER.
Wong’s own home institution is the Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital / BERI in Beijing, whereas the WISER Optomed CHARM pilot is running in Guangzhou (Guangzhou First People’s Hospital) – different cities, but the same national CHARM program (with over 100 hospitals/institutions involved across China).
I’ve been bouncing this around in Claude and my own head. In my opinion, it adds more smoke to the Optomed China case…