The prize for fastest selling item at this year’s show seems to have gone to Hilco’s Titanium Pad Arm Conversion Kit. This was thanks in no small part to it being mentioned by the Association of British Dispensing Opticians’ Dr Alicia Thompson in her CPD lecture ‘Inclusive paediatric dispensing’ on Saturday, March 1.
She highlighted it as a means of stopping plastic fixed pad frames from slipping and avoiding the child looking over the top of their spectacles.
It would be easy to think there is nothing new when it comes to dispensing tools and accessories, but many suppliers continue to innovate and it is always worth spending time investigating the latest gadgets to make the life of dispensing opticians and lab technicians easier. Who has not wasted hours trying to fit screws to spring hinges until they discover there are special tools for the job that enable it to be done in seconds.
New for 100% from Hilco were the ErgoProfile 8-pliers and surface kit. The standard set includes the company’s best-selling pliers, with new high-quality thermoplastic elastomer handles that are designed to be self-standing and always on hand thanks to their magnetic base.
Meanwhile, the pliers are backed by a lifetime warranty too. The magnetic iron base mat/workstation is available in a choice of two sizes and stylish finishes – leather or fibre. The overhanging edge usefully prevents damage to your desk when tightening screws too.
Hilco has also added a new dimension to its old favourite Logic system – with a handy black stand containing the key repair parts you need day-to-day. The Logic range is about saving time, space and inventory, and includes nose pads that are compatible with both screw fit and standard push fit frames.
It was good to see Hilco is now expanding into optometric diagnostic equipment since its recent acquisition of M&S Technologies. Its Smart System VR Headset, also available from EssilorLuxottica at the show, offers the full suite of field screening tests, as well as many other tests, including binocular vision (to be covered in a later article).
It is a truly portable format, suitable for practice and domiciliary use, at a fraction of the price of table mounted equivalents and can be used with your glasses on. Just tell your patients to visit the hairdressers after their eye exam, not before.
Supplier Labpads was attracting much interest in its new range of lab equipment and tools including what it claims is the Ultimate Lab Cloth for professional use. Washable, 40x30cm, with an absorbent terry side for deep cleaning and a microfibre side for final polishing, it certainly seemed to work even on dry lenses.
Elsewhere, there were lots of new measuring devices, from the novel pupillary distance (PD) rule supplied in the goody bag from
Mainline, which launched its new range of Vulcane ophthalmic lenses at the show, to a host of computerised devices from a variety of lens suppliers that were available to purchase outright or via rebate schemes based on volume of lenses dispensed.
EssilorLuxottica sported an updated version of its Visioffice X (pictured right) which retains the excellent and easy-to-use measuring system linking seamlessly with the ordering system for lenses, including Varilux XR Series personalised lenses.
What is most impressive about this device is its ability to market lenses and coatings directly to patients, and to explain what measurements have been taken and why – a useful distraction while the optician finishes up the ordering process.
The Visioffice uses a jig to provide the three cameras with reference points to facilitate the measurement of wrap and pantoscopic tilt. These have the tendency to imbalance the frame and may promote an artificial head position. Jig systems also often require manual adjustment of measurements.
However, also on the EssilorLuxottica stand was the Spark 4 (left) digital measuring device from Shamir, which offers a jig-free experience via an effortless and quick, fully automated experience utilising deep learning artificial intelligence to accurately record even the hardest to measure parameters.
The Seiko Vision Experience Centre offers a compact floor standing unit that uses AI to recognise the gender and age of anyone walking up to it and generates appropriate smart advertising for the patient based on its analysis of them.
It enables the dispensing optician or optical advisor to offer ultra precise measurements, jig free, and an advanced patient consultation enhanced by the presence of over 30 physical lens samples. These are stored within the unit in addition to the virtual lens and frame demonstrations and lifestyle questionnaire data. 
Across at Hoya, a different approach was evident. The visuReal MasterAI (right) uses a highly compact and discreet wall-mounted six-camera mirror system in conjunction with a tablet computer to take jig-free measurements with the virtual elimination of manual adjustments.
One of the problems with measurement systems in the past has been staff reverting to their faithful PD rule when the practice is busy. This should no longer be necessary, as the system is accurate and fast, and once the integration with lens ordering is taken into account it must surely be the most efficient way of working.
Jai Kudo was exhibiting another example of virtual reality headset technology. 2024 Optician Awards Winner the Kudos VR experience analyses and interprets the dynamic nature of your patient’s gaze and takes precise measurements to offer a truly personalised Kudos progressive lens.
Rodenstock has moved on from the concept of personalised lenses and measurements with its Big Exact Sensitive lenses. These use the DNEye Scanner to measure the eye’s full biometry, including wavefront aberrometry (figure 1) to correct for higher order aberrations within the eye. It captures hundreds of thousands of data points and parameters to feed into lens production for sharper vision at every angle of gaze.
New for this year is an assessment of visual sensitivity. This describes how a person perceives disruptions in their visual field and allows the aberrational astigmatism to be pushed to the most appropriate area of the lens for that individual.
It is claimed that four out of five people prefer lenses optimised for their individual sensitivity, compared to similar lenses without this feature and offers a key point of differentiation to other personalised progressives.
Dispensing equipment has not previously been the sexiest of topics to write up in a post exhibition report, yet this year at 100% Optical we have even seen innovation in mundane items such as pliers, nose pads and cleaning cloths.
While many dispensing opticians still seem to prefer their freebie mono-PD rules, the evidence demonstrates that even in the most skilled hands, it is not as accurate as the devices outlined here.
It is now over a quarter of a century since Rodenstock first introduced individualised lens technology to the world, and computerised camera measuring systems followed shortly afterwards, yet the majority of patients are not offered individualised lenses in the UK, despite their considerable benefits.
When marketing departments describe lenses with a choice of corridor lengths as tailor-made, and computerised measuring devices are used for theatre rather than the dispensing of genuinely personalised lenses, the industry is surely missing a trick.
The technology here is the result of decades of research and innovation. What these devices can do from both a measurement and an in-practice marketing perspective is staggering – and let us not forget that individualised lenses offer considerable visual benefits to the majority of patients, create loyalty to your practice and are highly affordable when purchased via a rebate scheme attached to lens volumes. What are you waiting for?
