IACLE PRESENTS 2016 AWARDS

The International Association of Contact Lens Educators (IACLE) presented the IACLE Contact Lens Educator of the Year Awards and IACLE Travel Award at the American Academy of Optometry (AAO) annual meeting in Anaheim, CA in November.

The ceremony took place at an International Reception at the Academy 2016 meeting. The reception was sponsored by CooperVision and attended by delegates from around the world.

The IACLE Contact Lens Educator of the Year Awards recognize and reward achievements in contact lens education worldwide. Each winner receives a bursary of up to $3,000 toward the cost of attending a major international conference.

Sponsored by CooperVision, three Educator of the Year Awards are presented, one for each of IACLE’s three global regions. As we previously reported in our May 2016 News Spectrum, the 2016 winners were:

IACLE Americas Contact Lens Educator of the Year 2016
Dr. Jorge Giovanni Vargas
Universidad de La Salle, Facultad de Optometria, Colombia

IACLE Asia Pacific Contact Lens Educator of the Year 2016
Dr. Prema Chande
Lotus College of Optometry, Mumbai, India

IACLE Europe / Africa – Middle East Contact Lens Educator of the Year 2016
Professor James Wolffsohn
Aston University, Birmingham, UK

The IACLE Travel Award is a travel bursary for an IACLE Educator Member starting out on his or her career who would not otherwise be able to attend a major international conference. The annual award is funded by IACLE. The 2016 recipient was:

IACLE Travel Award 2016
Eman Alzghoul
Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan

This year, for the first time, the IACLE Awards winners were offered a choice of international meetings to attend as their prize. All of this year’s recipients chose to travel to the Academy 2016 meeting in Anaheim.

Nominations and applications for the 2017 IACLE Awards opened in December. Visit www.iacle.org/joomla/awards to learn how to submit nominations.

In other IACLE news, the association recently announced that Euclid Systems Corporation is the latest company to become a Donor Sponsor of IACLE. The U.S.-based manufacturer specializes in myopia management and orthokeratology lens products.

Euclid joins IACLE’s major sponsors—Platinum Sponsor Alcon and Silver Sponsors CooperVision and Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Companies—that together help support the association’s contact lens programs worldwide.

IACLE is the leading provider of educational and information resources essential to contact lens educators. It currently has 776 active members in 71 countries around the world. Of these, around half are in its Global Priority Countries (China, India, Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil, and Russia). Europe and North America are also well represented.

Through its members, IACLE’s programs reached more than 20,000 students in nearly 600 institutions in 2015. IACLE recently introduced the New IACLE Contact Lens Course (ICLC), a 30-lecture course fully revised and updated by the world’s leading authorities in contact lenses, to keep pace with developments in the contact lens field.

ABB OPTICAL GROUP TO HOST FREE ICD FLEXFIT WORKSHOP

Sponsored by Paragon Vision Sciences, ABB Optical Group will present a free hands-on ICD FlexFit workshop on Jan. 25 from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Rio Hotel Las Vegas prior to the Global Specialty Lens Symposium (GSLS).

Led by research scientist and clinical instructor Randy Kojima and Pacific University College of Optometry associate professor Patrick Caroline, the three-hour training and education program for novice and advanced scleral fitters will cover the ICD FlexFit scleral lens design. Limited seating is available.

Participants will also have reserved seating for the ABB Optical Group Manufacturers Breakout Session on ICD billing and coding from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Jan. 28 at GSLS.

To register, call (800) 772-3911 and choose option 3, or email specialtycontactlenses@abboptical.com.

JJVCI UNVEILS DIGITAL GUIDE FOR EYECARE PROFESSIONALS

Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Inc. (JJVCI) launched an all-new Digital Guide by Acuvue Brand Contact Lenses, a resource to help eyecare professionals develop or optimize a digital marketing strategy to encourage new patient visits, stay engaged with current patients, and keep them informed of new contact lens options.

The actionable and interactive guide includes topics such as targeting, websites, social media, and more, with tips for reaching patients where they are online, simple updates to optimize a practice website, and effective ways for leveraging social media to reach different patient groups. It is available for free download from www.AcuvueProfessional.com . In addition to the Digital Guide, professionals can download and use a number of free, customizable assets, including digital banner ads, social media posts, and email templates via www.MyAcuvueResourceCenter.com (free registration required).

Every chapter in the Digital Guide begins with an exercise to introduce a key concept to help give a better perspective of what a typical patient may encounter. After the concept is studied in detail, each chapter concludes with a worksheet that helps professionals to map out a digital strategy and next steps to begin reaching more patients. Professionals are able to spend more or less time on sections of the guide based on their practice’s patient demographics, what is working in the current digital strategy, and the areas of their strategy that may need to be augmented.

GSLS TRACK FEATURED AT 2016 OPTOMETRIC MANAGEMENT SYMPOSIUM

The 2016 Optometric Management Symposium (OMS), which took place Dec. 1 to 4 in Orlando, FL at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort and Spa, featured a new, one-and-a-half day Global Specialty Lens Symposium (GSLS) education track. The more than 500 attendees of OMS had to opportunity to learn the latest contact lens techniques and technologies from a global faculty of contact lens experts.

Topics of the GSLS track included ocular shape in soft contact lens fitting, corneal reshaping, custom soft lenses, myopia control, various aspects of scleral lenses, and billing and coding for specialty contact lens practice. The international faculty included Eef van der Worp, BOptom, PhD; Randy Kojima; Craig Norman; Edward S. Bennett, OD, MSEd; Lynette Johns, OD; Langis Michaud, OD; Patrick Caroline; and John Rumpakis, OD.

The 2017 OMS, which will take place from Nov. 2 to 5, 2017 at Disney’s Yacht & Beach Club Resort in Orlando, will also feature a GSLS specialty contact lens track. Visit www.omconference.com .

NEW SOFT LENS FOR IRREGULAR CORNEAS COMING TO U.S. MARKET

Menicon America, Inc., Menicon’s U.S. subsidiary, has announced that the Rose K2 Soft contact lens design for irregular corneas will launch at the 2017 Global Specialty Lens Symposium later this month in Las Vegas. Dr. Paul Rose, inventor of the Rose K family of lens designs for the irregular cornea, led the development of the Rose K2 Soft lens.

The new Rose K2 Soft design is a daily wear silicone hydrogel soft lens for irregular corneas that is intended for three-month replacement. The primary indications are intolerance to GP lenses, new contact lens wearers who have irregular corneas, early to moderate irregular corneas, or conditions in which the environment may be unsuitable for GP contact lens wear or in which a GP lens may be unstable, such as for sports.

Rose K2 Soft uses the same five-step fitting method common to all Rose K designs. The design features an aspheric back optic zone, front-surface toricity, and front-surface aberration control for optimal visual acuity. Additionally, Menicon says that Rose K2 Soft offers precise edge lift control, prism ballast stabilization, and reverse geometry.

The Rose K2 Soft lens will be available in the United States through ABB Optical Group and Art Optical Contact Lens, Inc. as well as through a number of authorized distributors. Additional products details and parameters will appear in the next Product Spectrum.

NEW PROGRAM FOR GLOBAL CONTACT LENS FORUM AT VEE

Vision Expo is once again proud to announce the Global Contact Lens Forum (GCLF), which will take place on Thursday, March 30 as part of International Vision Expo East 2017. This year’s program, developed by co-directors S. Barry Eiden, OD, and Louise Sclafani, OD, focuses on research and practice in the contact lens industry.

The event will kick off with the GCLF’s State of the Contact Lens Industry leadership panel, which will feature heads of research and development from the “big four” contact lens manufacturers, along with researchers from the specialty and startup companies of the industry. They will share with attendees how new technologies develop from an initial concept all the way through to their introduction to the eyecare community.

The second session will delve into the world of clinical research. It will include some of the most highly respected practitioners who have made clinical research an integral part of their professional lives; they will present how their research has impacted the way in which we all practice.

Finally, there will be a doctors’ panel that will include eyecare practitioners from private practice, academic/hospital-based practice, MD/OD and refractive surgery/co-management center-based practice, and also from corporate practice. These practitioners will share their career-long experiences and enlighten our attendees as to how their particular modality of practice has resulted in success and professional satisfaction for them.

The GCLF is supported by CooperVision and Johnson & Johnson Vision Care and is supported by an unrestricted education grant from Alcon and Bausch + Lomb. For more information, visit http://east.visionexpo.com/Education/Global-Contact-Lens-Forum .

VTI NAMES ROSA LEE AS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF MANUFACTURING & ENGINEERING

Visioneering Technologies, Inc. (VTI) has named Rosa Lee to the position of Executive Director of Manufacturing & Engineering. Lee will direct the manufacturing and product optimization efforts for the company.

Lee received her bachelor’s and master’s of science from the University of Rochester in Optics and Biomedical Engineering and is Six Sigma certified. She brings more than 16 years of product development and optimization experience with companies such as Bausch + Lomb, SynergEyes, and Corning. VTI says that her expertise in contact lens design optimization will be a significant addition to the VTI team and will help to accelerate new product development efforts.

Lee will be based at VTI’s Atlanta-area headquarters.

ASCO’S CASE STUDIES IN CULTURAL COMPETENCY AVAILABLE ONLINE

The Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry’s (ASCO) Diversity and Cultural Competency Committee (DCCC) is pleased to announce that its “Case Studies in Cultural Competency” is now available online at www.opted.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/FINAL-7-19-16-Cultural-Competency-Case-Studies.final_.pdf .

For those wanting to incorporate cultural competency into their teaching or clinical efforts, this tool is a downloadable compendium and contains the seven winning and best case studies from two years of entries to the ASCO Cultural Case Study Competition for Students and Residents, according to ASCO.

Each case study describes patient-based encounters in detail and how cultural competency played a role. The studies offer details regarding patient-centered attitude, knowledge, and skills as well as the dilemma or circumstance pertaining to cultural awareness/competency, how the situation was handled, and what was learned from it. ASCO says that they are written in an intimate way, as if readers are sitting in the exam room with the practitioner and patient, feeling and seeing everything that they are experiencing. A “case discussion questions” section is also included in the document.

This resource was made possible by funding from Walmart.