It is exactly 70 years since a small pharmacy in the Texas town of Fort Worth decided to go into the sterile ophthalmic products market. Robert Alexander and William Connor, whose names were concatenated to create Alcon, went on to create an international eye care product giant. In 1977 Alcon was bought by Nestle and underwent a massive increase in international growth before becoming part of Novartis.
Guests were welcomed to Alcon’s Watchmoor Park facility near Camberley, which is known as the Alcon Academy for Eyecare Excellence, by vice-president of sales Ray Pasko. He started by highlighting the huge impact visual impairment has on the world today. ‘There’s a tremendous injustice in eye care,’ he said before cataloguing some of the key numbers facing global and local eye care.
Around the world 1.7bn people have presbyopia and 20m suffer from cataracts. Uncorrected refractive errors are endured by 154m, diabetic retinopathy by 93m and glaucoma by 67m. By leading innovation Alcon could help redress some of those issues, 80% of visual impairment is preventable or curable, he said. Alcon was spending heavily in R&D, $1bn across all eye care sectors. In contact lenses, claimed Pasko, Alcon invested more in R&D than the next three biggest contact lens companies combined. In response to questions about the future of contact lenses Pasko said Alcon was working with tech giant Google on a range of products that would take contact lenses into new realms of eye care and health care.
Concentrating on the UK he said there were some 30m presbyopes, 500,000 cataract sufferers and 300,000 people with undetected glaucoma. ‘We can’t always fix it but we can improve it,’ he suggested before going on to explain how Alcon deals with all eye problems among all ages at all levels.
To most Optician readers Alcon means contact lenses, drops and solutions. In this sector Jonathan Bench, head of professional affairs, UK and Ireland, explained how Alcon offered a complete suite of lenses from cosmetic to monthlies and daily lenses including what he described as a new class of contact lens, Dailies Total 1. This was the first and only water gradient lens he said which mixed the breathability of silicone hydrogel with the comfort of high water content.
The evening also allowed Alcon to talk about its support for optometrists and retail optics and its work with ophthalmologists and ophthalmic products. The technology on display was very impressive. The facility includes the wet lab for ophthalmology and a dry lab for contact lens teach-ins. All rooms are interconnected to lecture theatres allowing clinicians, lecturers, patients and students to interact in practical learning sessions. One highlight was Alcon’s Nginuity 3D visualisation tool which helps Vitreoretinal Surgeons perform the most complex procedures. It also demonstrated a virtual reality system which allowed users to walk ‘into’ a water gradient contact lens.
For its optometry partners Alcon’s Academy for Excellence offers a full range of training courses covering practical issues around products, clinical techniques, CET delivery and softer topics for support staff.
Bench also had some exciting news about the Alcon Academy, the programme during which Alcon invites a select group of newly qualified optometrists to learn and develop their careers and ideas together. This year, for the first time, the two-year programme will be thrown open to international students. Once selected the group will meet five times over a two-year programme. The idea behind the Academy is to allow optometrists to develop ideas, broaden their scope of practice, meet like-minded professionals and gain commercial insight into running a successful optical practice. The latest intake will be the fourth cohort of newly qualifieds to benefit.
Bench said going from student, to pre-reg, to newly qualified could be a scary time. The Academy hoped to help that process. ‘It’s a bit like learning to drive. You pass your test and then you really learn how to drive. We show them the opportunities that are available, we need trendsetters and trailblazers to take on new ideas. We believe the Academy is showing the way.’ He said some of those who have completed the Academy have gone on to much greater things, he also said the peer to peer interaction had proved invaluable.
Of course Alcon also has to sell contact lenses, solutions and drops and it demonstrated some of the practical help it had on hand for optical practices. Particularly topical is Alcon’s schemes around contact lens supply and the web. Easyonline is a delivery system which is designed to take the hassle away from practices. This system delivers, tracks and records the lenses delivered to the patient’s door.
The next step is the Incontact webshop. This is a customer facing site which drives footfall to the practice. Alcon said Incontact put the practice back in control of online contact lens buying and care back into the hands of the optical professional. Mark Halling, head of marketing, said it allows the optometrists or the CLO to control the right to buy while taking the hassle off the practice. Alcon fulfils the order but the practice controls supply of lenses along with the aftercare.