As high profile launches go, Clearlab’s announcement of its flatpack AquaSoft Singles contact lens was up there with the best of them. The main difference with this announcement was that it was introducing a ‘concept’ rather than a live product. 
That aside, the audience packed into New York’s Equitable Auditorium appeared genuinely impressed by the technology introduced as AquaSoft Singles. This is a contact lens package which flattens the contact lens within the packing to create a carrier just 1mm thick.
The unique selling points of AquaSoft Singles don’t end there. The design of the carrier is such that when the foil is separated from the prolypropolyne base the lens is lifted up on a former which presents the lens outside first to the wearer. The lens is then simply 
pinched off and inserted, leaving the front surface untouched. Adding to the list of patented features of the Singles blister system is bold left and right lettering on the package and the ability to deliver pairs of lenses as lefts and rights to the wearer in the secondary lens packaging. This enables a month’s supply of Singles to be delivered in a plastic matchbox-sized dispenser which releases the lenses one-by-one. Another credit card-style carrier allows two pairs of lenses to be kept in a wallet.
All of these, many patented, features were developed as a result of research into users’ habits, said Clearlab.
On hand to provide some detail was Professor Nathan Efron, flown in from Brisbane for the event. In a slick double-act with US anchorman Forrest Sawyer, Efron explained that the success of all contact lens systems was dependent upon the lens, the solutions and the packaging.
The first part of the presentation extolled the virtues of the daily disposable modality. This may be an argument largely won in Europe but penetration of dailies in the US is still low.
Efron said research showed that 40 per cent of wearers allowed tap water to come into contact with their case, that cases weren’t replaced often enough and that, taking all elements into consideration, cleaning compliance failure rates were as high as 97.5 per cent.
Solutions posed further issues while packaging created a number of problems. Patients have to read very small print to identify left and right. A tough task without their lenses in. Often patients sacrifice visual acuity for simplicity and request lenses of the same power to make life simple.
Better hygiene
Pursuing the hygiene angle, Efron said a traditional blister requires the wearer to stick their finger into the lens, touching the surface which rests on the eye. Orientation is another problem. Lenses become inverted inside the blister, making insertion and handling fiddly. ‘Patients deserve better,’ he concluded.
Steve Newman, chief technology officer, argued that packaging technology may be partly responsible for the low take up of daily lenses. While big changes were made to packaging as lenses moved from yearly, to quarterly, to monthly modalities there had been no innovation to reflect the change to the daily disposable category.
Singles reflected how people use and wear contact lenses, said Newman, heralding the shift from blisters to Singles as significant as that from glass vials to foil packs. He also had good news for the profession. The flexibility of production meant the practitioner’s details could be printed on the secondary packaging endorsing contact lenses as a medical product.
The US-dominated audience was very interested in this point. Clearlab is owned by Utah-based 1-800 Contacts, a big online seller of contact lens products and not a favourite with the optical profession in the US. Being both a low-cost online seller and manufacturer of lenses is not an easy mix.
Jonathan Coon, chief executive officer of 1-800 Contacts, (pictured above right) brought a more commercial angle to proceedings with his contention that for Singles to achieve its full potential 1-800 Contacts and Clearlab would have to become separate entities. ‘While 1-800 Contacts serves two million US customers, we realise that there is a much bigger opportunity for Clearlab to offer AquaSoft Singles to the 96 million contact lens wearers and 2.5 billion visually corrected people worldwide.’
Exactly how and when this would happen is still unknown.
1-800 is exploring all avenues to bring that about, said Coon. He likened Clearlab and AquaSoft Singles today to Vistakon and Acuvue in the 1980s with the rider that 1-800 didn’t have the financial power of Vistakon’s owner.
What everyone wanted to know, but Clearlab was unable to say, was just how soon AquaSoft Singles would be available to buy. If a backer were found today and ‘we did it ourselves’, AquaSoft Singles could be a product in two years, said Coon. By partnering with someone who has the ability to do it now, that deadline could be much closer, he added.
Future partners
Widening the possibilities further, both he and Graham Mullis, president and managing director, (pictured above left) speculated that any contact lens could be put into the Singles technology. A partner didn’t have to be a contact lens company, it could be a financial backer and the technology could be licensed to all-comers. An arrangement with Menicon in Japan has already been agreed but details were hard to come by.
There was more than a hint of mystery about the launch. The products were opened by staff but guests weren’t allowed to touch. The foil used is proprietary and while the former that lifts the contact lenses up appears no more than polypropylene in a perforated spiral, Newman insists that what Clearlab has achieved is not as simple as it looks.
AquaSoft Singles is an impressive technology but one that requires millions of dollars to bring it to market. Whether Clearlab can be as successful with its financial arrangements as it has been with its technology remains to be seen.