Patrica Era Bath, M.D., (Nov. 4, 1942 to May 30, 2019) is best known for her invention called Laserphaco Probe, a device and technique for cataract surgery. She also was the first female member of the Jules Stein Eye Institute.

Bath was the first black female doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose. A holder of five patents, she also founded the nonprofit American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington, D.C. She received her medical degree from Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., interned at Harlem Hospital from 1968-69, and completed a fellowship in ophthalmology at Columbia University from 1969-70. Bath was the first African American to complete an ophthalmology residency with New York University’s School of Medicine in 1973. Two years later, the UCLA School of Medicine appointed her the first female faculty member in its department of ophthalmology. Believing that “eyesight is a basic human right,” Bath co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in 1977, an organization whose mission is to protect, preserve and restore the gift of sight.

Interning in New York City in the 1960s sparked a revelation for Bath, noticing that rates of blindness and visual impairment were much higher at the Harlem Hospital’s eye clinic, which served many Black patients, than at the eye clinic at Columbia University, which mostly served whites. That observation spurred her to conduct a study that found twice the rate of blindness among African Americans compared with whites. Throughout the rest of her career, Bath explored inequities in vision care. She created the discipline of community ophthalmology, which approaches vision care from the perspectives of community medicine and public health.

In the early 1980s, Bath studied laser technology and saw its potential for eye surgery. In 1986, she invented the Laserphaco probe, a device and method for cataract treatments. When she patented the instrument in 1988, she became the first African American female doctor to receive a patent for a medical invention.

By 1983 she was chair of the ophthalmology residency training program at Drew-UCLA, the first woman in the United States to hold such a position. In 1993, Bath retired from UCLA Medical Center and was appointed to the honorary medical staff. After that, she advocated for telemedicine  to provide medical services to remote areas.

Bath was also recognized for her philanthropic work in the field of ophthalmology by President Barack Obama. In 2009, she was put on his commission for digital accessibility to blind children.

Her greatest passion, however, continued to be fighting blindness until her death. Her “personal best moment” occurred on a humanitarian mission to North Africa, when she restored the sight of a woman who had been blind for 30 years by implanting a keratoprosthesis. ”The ability to restore sight is the ultimate reward,” she said.

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