Faculty Profile Lane Ulrich

Dr. Ulrich provides his patients which general eye care including diagnosis and management of cataracts, refractive error, glaucoma, diseases of the anterior segment (front of the eye) and diabetic retinopathy screening. He is one of the two main providers of cataract surgery in the department. In July of 2005 Dr. Ulrich became the Ophthalmology residency program directorship switching to the assistant program director in January of 2020 as a result of duties as the Interim Chair. During his tenure he oversaw the establishment of standard instruments to evaluate the ACGME's core competencies and then on to the first ACGME Milestones project. Also he saw the library to be updated, a surgical skills lab and course established, patient safety projects, tweaked scholarly activity and in 2017 worked with Dr. Amy Estes to transition the residency from 4-month block rotations to monthly rotation (VA remaining an exception). During his 15 years at the helm of the program directorship there was only 1 citation issued and rapidly managed by the ACGME.

Beyond his clinical practice Dr. Ulrich was involved in research in the diabetic retinopathy screening arena. When he first joined the ophthalmic team in July of 2000 there were very few off-the-shelf digital retinal screening systems available for mobile use. He devoted much time to the development of hardware and computer software solutions producing an effective system for mobile retinopathy screening. In conjunction with the efforts of the Community Health Outreach Program of the Medical College of Georgia this system was deployed into primary care provider offices and other centers throughout 16 counties in East Georgia. While it is no longer in operation it resulted in the identification of many patients with untreated and visually threatening retinopathy and macular edema. Currently he is involved with proteomics and glaucoma holding a co-PI in an NIH grant and actively publishing in this area.

Additional interests include international ophthalmology (Kenya, Papua New Guinea, southeastern Romania) and application of information technology to practice efficiency.

Outside of the medical arena he enjoys reading, taught a weekly class at a local church from 2008 to 2021, and flying DJI drones. He obtained his FAA 107 unmanned aerial pilots license in 2016 allowing him to fly in commercial activities, e.g. insurance inspection flights. He posts some of these images to Google Maps and as of 2021 surpassed 36 million views of those. He maintains a blog at laneulrich.com for personal/spiritual/drone related things, and posts teaching/surgical videos on his YouTube channel.

Clinical Arena

Summary: As a comprehensive ophthalmologist Dr. Ulrich provides for a wide spectrum of eye care extending from the need for glasses and care of dry eyes to cataract surgery, early diabetic eye disease and medical glaucoma.

Care areas: Glasses, cataracts, routine eye examinations, medical glaucoma and screening, diabetic eye examination, dry eyes.

Key symptoms:Ocular dryness, tearing, itching, blurry vision, floaters.

Specialty: Comprehensive Ophthalmology

Educational Background

BS Biology Houghton College, Houghton, NY (1992)
Doctor of Medicine  Medical College of Georgia, Augusta (1996)
Preliminary Medicine Internship Medical College of Georiga (1997)
Ophthalmology Residency Medical College of Georgia, Augusta (2000)
Board Certification American Board of Ophthalmology (2001)