The bright and bold CooperVision team at 100% Optical
This year’s edition of 100% Optical, held in London on February 24-26, was boosted by more contact lens companies choosing to exhibit than in previous years.
CooperVision
CooperVision was perhaps the most visible exhibitor at this year’s 100% Optical with a large, bright, and impactful stand augmented by a small army of company staff sporting equally striking yellow hoodies. At last year’s event, the company launched its Fresh Thinking campaign, which involved beginning a conversation about how the contact lens patient journey could evolve and help grow the overall contact lens category.
The initial stage of the campaign saw CooperVision survey 580 eye care professionals (ECPs) and 500 patients. Insights gained included 84% of patients did not feel confident on the day of their first contact lens appointment and that only 14% of ECPs gave patients a lifestyle questionnaire before that first appointment.
At this year’s show, CooperVision asked ECPs to share how they tackle some of the pinch points in the contact lens fitting journey, as highlighted by the ECP and patient Fresh Thinking surveys. These hints and tips aimed to help provide attendees with inspiration for changes within their own practices pre, on-the-day, and post contact lens fit.
‘We’ve come back this year to discuss insights designed to make the contact lens fitting journey more efficient and enjoyable for everyone involved,’ said Sarah Weston, head of marketing at CooperVision. ‘By casting a wide net for ideas, breaking the journey down into three sections and identifying the pinch points associated with each, we’ve offered a fresh start to eye care professionals.’
‘For example, at the pre-appointment stage, we established that, as a group of ECPs, we are not great at preparing for our contact lens patients,’ said Christina Olner, head of professional affairs UK&I at CooperVision. ‘Low deployment of lifestyle questioning means that patients run the risk of not having suitable products available at the first appointment and not having a successful start to wearing contact lenses.
'The solution to this pinch point relates to diary management and employing the right members of a practice team at the right moment. We also provide practitioners with a very simple and accessible questionnaire to give to patients in advance of the first appointment.’
UltraVision
Specialist soft contact lens manufacturer, UltraVision unveiled its new logo and website at 100% Optical, the culmination of an 18-month renewal project instigated by Sarahjane Cross, CEO at UltraVision. The modern designs reflect UltraVision’s ethos for improved quality of life through improving vision and eye health for all.
‘When I took on the role of CEO in 2021, my aim was to understand exactly who UltraVision is as a company,’ said Cross. ‘We want our communication to the market to be crystal clear and you cannot do that until you know who you are and where you are going. We enlisted an external consultant to assess the brand with a 360-degree view from staff, our customers, and patients too.’
The new logo (pictured) features the company name in a lowercase bespoke font and an eye icon.
‘We feel the logo looks very friendly,’ says Cross. ‘That was something that came back from the research; that customers feel we are a friendly, approachable company that they can pick up the phone to at any time.’
UltraVision’s newly redesigned website, which went live at 10am on the Saturday of the show, offers an enhanced user experience and support to customers. ‘The new website is much better optimised for mobile phone access and gives us more scope to provide education,’ said Cross.
The company also shared some information about upcoming additions to its product range. ‘We have new products on the way,’ said Cross. ‘The first is a monthly disposable, which will fill a gap in our portfolio. The second is a new monthly frequency KeraSoft lens for patients with keratoconus and irregular corneas. This is a less specialist lens than we generally offer and will fit 95% of patients with keratoconus. It is affordable and disposable.’
Alcon
Jason Klomp was appointed to vision care country franchise head for UK & Ireland at Alcon in 2023. Klomp has worked for Alcon across the US and Europe and shared his thoughts on the UK contact lens market with Optician at 100% Optical.
‘This market feels very technical, which is shown by the focus people at the tradeshow have for getting their continuing professional development points,’ said Klomp. ‘It is illustrative of a very professional approach that puts the patient first. For me, that is an opportunity because that is what Alcon does. We put patients first. We create a lot of products that have distinct benefits for patients. It is a good fit.’
Alcon launched its Total30 multifocal contact lens at the show. This offers the company’s Water Gradient material in a monthly lens. ‘Our view is that patients are compromising if they don’t have Water Gradient lenses,’ said Klomp. ‘Hema was a great material in the 1990s, but with the compromise that it was not a breathable lens.
'Then we solved the breathable problem with silicone hydrogel, and that was great, but you lost the comfort of the water. So, in very simple terms, we have combined them, and for us, that is an opportunity for patients to reengage with contact lenses or have a great first experience with contact lenses.’
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) primarily used 100% Optical as an opportunity to focus on recent innovation with particular emphasis on how it can benefit presbyopic patients.
‘We are really focusing at the moment on the presbyopic patient,’ said James Haden, sales director in the UK and Ireland for vision at J&J. ‘We see it as an area of big need because you see a massive drop off in contact lens penetration around the onset of presbyopia for patients in their mid-40s.
'They do not realise that there are product options like Acuvue Oasys Max 1-Day and Acuvue Oasys Max 1-Day Multifocal contact lenses for presbyopia that can allow them to keep wearing contact lenses rather than revert to glasses.’
Haden noted that these dropouts are fundamentally due to lack of awareness and that J&J are implementing education strategies to remedy this. ‘The lenses I mentioned previously show really good results in terms of end of day comfort thanks to innovations in the manufacturing process and proprietary technologies,’ said Haden.
‘We want to help ECPs engage with the technology that we are offering and talk to their patients about presbyopia and contact lenses. We are encouraging visitors to our stand to be fitted and wear the lenses around the show, which is a busy visual environment, to really appreciate the performance.’
Bausch + Lomb
Bausch + Lomb also had presbyopia to the fore at 100% Optical with interactive screens allowing visitors to its stand to see through the eyes of a presbyope. ‘We are talking predominantly about the presbyopia sector of the market, said Nicola Hands, senior marketing project manager at Bausch + Lomb.
‘Contact lens drop-out rates rise significantly as patients experience presbyopia and that is detrimental to practices and patients. We know the penetration of multifocal contact lenses is relatively small within the market, so practices are falling back on spectacles or other solutions. However, this does not meet the lifestyle and work requirements of a proportion of patients.’
Hands gave examples of issues including people wanting to read restaurant menus but not wanting to wear their glasses in public, office environments where people switch constantly between phone, laptop and talking to colleagues, and driving where people switch between road, sat-nav and dashboard.
‘These kinds of situations can be avoided by deployment of our multifocal products, said Hands. ‘We have the single use modality with Biotrue Oneday for Presbyopia, and monthly with Ultra for Presbyopia and, the most recently launched, Ultra Multifocal for Astigmatism. We have fitting guides for all of them available on our FitBetter app.’
Safilens
Safilens was promoting its myopia management lens, Delivery Tyro, at the Excel. ‘Other myopia management designs are using diffused vision, whereas Delivery Tyro comes at it from a totally different angle,’ said Ian McDermott, country manager UK at Safilens.
‘We are using tyrosine, which is one of the very few amino acids that is capable of breaking the blood barrier. So, while a child is wearing the lens, the amino acid is released into the eye, gets through the blood barrier, and then it raises the levels of dopamine inside the eye. The dopamine has a normalising effect on the elongation of the eyeball.’
McDermott noted that, while a peer review study of the lens is still ongoing, in-house feedback is indicating high reductions of projected levels of myopia in wearers.
‘Once the peer review is published and released, I think we’ll have a totally different ball game; the results are that good,’ said McDermott. ‘The big advantage from the practitioner’s point of view is that this is a single vision, daily disposable lens. So, if the child’s prescription is minus two, that is what we fit and there is no adaptation period. The materials are also very child friendly; it is a very comfortable daily disposable hydrogel lens.’