Year after year, industry manufacturers invest eye-watering sums into developing treatments and solutions for those who suffer with everyday eye complaints such as dry eye and blepharitis. This year’s Optrafair saw not just product updates, but new devices and transformative treatment services come on to the market to help practices offer the best care for their patients.
Dry eye and blepharitis
Dry eye disease affects 15% of the UK population, with the figure rising to one in three in the over-65s according to the NHS. It is no surprise then that Scope Ophthalmics has decided to expand its dry eye treatment by developing a specialist in-practice Tear Clinic service aimed at ‘transforming’ dry eye disease diagnosis and management.
The Tear Clinic offers practices TearLab diagnosis technology, CET training, management plans and regional marketing and PR support in one complete package. It starts at £218.60 a month and promises large returns for practices.
Product manager Liadain Murphy said: ‘The Tear Clinic has been developed with industry experts and we’ve had really good feedback from our patient studies. Those who have been receiving treatment through the service said they had an increased quality of life as it meant they had longer reading times and were overall much more comfortable.’
Murphy argued the Tear Clinic is a necessary service due to weaknesses in standard sight tests. She said: ‘The standard sight test at the moment doesn’t allow for the time to give patients consideration in terms of what they may be suffering from. We found patients really appreciate the pre-emptive nature of the clinics as many cases of dry eye are asymptomatic.’
Currently the scheme has been piloted in a handful of practices. Owner of Hammond and Dummer Opticians in Milton Keynes Claire Ranger said: ‘Using Tear Clinic to expand our services means that we now have an additional revenue stream and improved levels of customer retention. We offer Tear Clinic to all contact lens wearers and have significantly decreased the number of patients who stop wearing lenses due to discomfort.’
Scope Ophthalmics is now looking to roll out the Tear Clinic service to practices nationwide as well as expand its range of dry eye products.
Kestrel Ophthalmics used Optrafair to showcase the i-Med Pharma iPen (Optician 21.4.17), a hand-held device which measures osmolality within four seconds. The device costs £795 and the single-use sensors are £5, a price which strategic development manager Steve Bryan argued is much less expensive than the competition. He said: ‘We’ve had excellent feedback, there’s other means of doing the osmolality reading but they are much more time consuming and not as effective as this one.’
Care products
Over on The Body Doctor stand, the emphasis fell on The Eye Doctor Click & Go, which the company said was the world’s first reusable instant heat compress. Designed to help patients suffering with blepharitis, dry eye disease or painful and inflamed eyes, the mask is activated by a click sound and does not need an oven or microwave to heat up. After reaching 44°C, The Eye Doctor stays warm for 20 minutes and can be used up to 100 times.
The mask comes with an adjustable strap and carry bag and is also under 100ml meaning it can be carried on board during a flight. However, patients will need to place the mask in boiling water in order to reset it.
Sales director Sam Wymer said: ‘There’s nothing else like it on the market and the feedback we’ve had so far has been incredible. We’ve had lots of people coming up to us on the stand showing interest.’
There was excitement over at the Bondeye stand following the company’s recently launched brochure. The distributor used Optrafair to debut its new contact lens solution Avizor Alvera which is made using aloe vera concentrate.
Sales director Dave Walker said: ‘The solution has good natural qualities which is the big selling point for it. It resonates with patients because they know aloe vera has naturally stabilising priorities. We’ve only been selling it for eight weeks and it has already had lots of interest. I think people will be buying it for years to come.’
Contact lenses
Bausch+Lomb was again the only contact lens manufacturer out of the big four to exhibit at Optrafair this year. The contact lens giant teased at new products in the pipeline and showcased its expanding range of specialist lenses and recently launched website redesign.
Technical and scientific manager Richard Smith was keen to highlight the Quantum K lenses, which took the company two years to develop. He said: ‘We have heavily invested in our equipment in the lab in Hastings. It’s allowed us to stretch our products and keep investing in the niche part of the market.’
Smith also emphasised Bausch+Lomb is not just focused on selling its products to as many patients as possible. He said: ‘We are investing in patient needs before anything else. It’s not about the whole market using our products but about making a difference to those patients who need them most. We want to help opticians further their business by going in to deliver training and by letting patients know what’s available to them.’
Debuting in the UK was a new range of contact lenses from Malaysian lens manufacturer Supervision Optimax. The company currently has several distributors throughout America, Canada, United Kingdom, Japan, Brazil and Hong Kong and is now looking to expand even further. Supervision Optimax wants to take on some of the bigger players in the UK contact lens industry and said its contact lenses contain the best parts of technology from across the industry.