THIS MONTH’S FOCUS is on Oculus Inc. CLS recently had the pleasure to hear from Michael Wolber, Oculus Inc. president/CEO.

PLEASE TELL US ABOUT OCULUS INC.

Oculus is still a family-owned business. The company was founded in 1895 in Berlin, and currently, we have about 700 employees worldwide.

In the late 1990s, the owners in Germany founded Oculus North America (Oculus Inc.), the task of Oculus Inc. has always been to develop and support the North American market.

For almost 25 years, Oculus Inc. has been in the Pacific Northwest, just outside of Seattle, and we have grown the company from a one-person operation to about 70 employees [in the U.S.] today. [The owners] are investing in a new facility in Florida, while the headquarters continues to reside in the Pacific Northwest. Florida’s logistics and service center will help with inventory challenges and provide additional support.

In the early 2000s, our first big success in the U.S. was the Oculus Easyfield Perimeter. A few years later, we introduced the Oculus Pentacam, a complete game changer for the industry. It was the first rotating Scheimpflug camera that provided a full elevation profile of the cornea’s front and back surfaces.

When launched in 2004, it only took a few years to become the new gold standard in refractive surgery, and today the Pentacam is changing the optometry market. The ophthalmology market has always embraced the Pentacam for its ability to rule out keratoconus before refractive surgery. However, it took several years for the optometry market to catch on. Today, with the elevation-based and computer-designed contact lens market, the Pentacam is finding a special place in the contact lens industry, supporting practitioners in custom-designing contact lenses.

TELL US ABOUT ANY NEW DEVELOPMENTS FOR OCULUS INC.

One of the more recent developments has been the addition of our sclera profiling software for the Pentacam. We are now trying to push the limits of the optical system and the software to provide coverage over a much larger diameter—pushing 20mm to 22mm of the total cornea and scleral coverage, further allowing practitioners to customize landing zones of very large diameter scleral lenses.

In addition, we have released the Myopia Master, the latest technology addition to the Oculus portfolio. It combines a traditional autorefractor/keratometer with a biometer for axial length measurements.

Oculus has partnered with the Brien Holden Vision Institute to provide growth curves that are ethnicity, gender, and age-dependent—offering a great educational tool for parents to explain how the growth of the eye relates to their child’s myopia progression. The software and report from the Myopia Master can also be used to discuss different treatment modalities.

PLEASE SHARE YOUR VISION FOR THE CONTACT LENS FIELD.

I believe that our technology can increase the quality of life of patients by providing better data for more customized contact lenses. The challenge today is that more patients need access to high-end imaging devices such as the Pentacam. Our goal is to become a core partner for everyone who wants to provide specialty eye care, especially contact lenses, to utilize our technology, get better data for corneal assessments, and prescribe more customized contact lenses to patients.

Contact lens practitioners will have an opportunity to embrace custom-made contact lenses. Custom contact lenses tend to be better-fitting, more comfortable, and help build stronger relationships between the patient and practitioner. Unique, customized contact lenses will play an important role as practitioners are trying to diversify and secure their revenue stream, and these custom lenses will help with patient satisfaction. Obtaining a Pentacam scan today and receiving a fully customized lens tomorrow is certainly a goal that we have in mind. CLS