“The signs are good”

Of course, this goes beyond just me. This week, OT will be reflecting on the successes of 2024 and the challenges for the coming years. And for optometry in general, and the AOP in particular, 2024 has been a year of success.

If you had told me a year ago that the new Health Secretary would be citing High Street optometry as one of the engine rooms for patient care in the NHS, I’d have grabbed at that chance. Yes – we need to resist what appears to be growing pressure from some areas in ophthalmology for effective control over community eye care, and see a 10-Year Health Plan which truly lives up to Lord Darzi’s demand for a rebalancing of control (and finance) away from the hospital sector into primary care, but the signs are good.

Of course, some of the AOP’s successes of the past 12 months are less public facing. Like many organisations, we are constantly seeking to update our infrastructure to ensure we are running as efficiently as we can and providing our members with the best service we can offer. That means looking to see how we can take advantages of new technology to improve the quality of the member experience. As part of that, we are on the journey of refreshing our CRM system to help us ensure that we are always interacting with members in the ways they prefer and offering them the services they want. Its progress will be largely invisible to members, but it will be one of our core priorities for 2025.

If you had told me a year ago that the new Health Secretary would be citing High Street optometry as one of the engine rooms for patient care in the NHS, I’d have grabbed at that chance

Getting your member information-handling systems right comes with a range of benefits. Part of my academic background was in history and one of the things which has always obsessed me is the fact that large parts of the AOP’s own history is now lost to the mists of time. Let me give you an example: I was recently reading a book by Peter Ackroyd about the history of London (in this case about the parts of London buried under the earth), when I came across a wonderful anecdote of a 1940s East End optician, Mickey Davies, who responded to the woeful passivity of the authorities during the blitz by organising his own system of support for those sheltering in the space underground Spitalfields Fruit and Wool Exchange. Notably, he brought in medical care from a local GP. So successful was this model that the initial opposition from the establishment turned into widespread admiration, with Mickey being photographed alongside many famous figures of the day. What I would like to do, of course, is claim Mickey Davies as an AOP (or, given it was the early 1940s, IOO or JCQO) member – and the chances are that he was. But our records don’t go back that far to allow me to do that.

At a time when the Government is talking up the importance of community-led, multidisciplinary healthcare, and at a time when the hospital dominated health authorities are continuing to press on with their own establishment-dominated agenda, Mickey’s example of a High Street optician not merely grasping the needs of his patients, but co-ordinating the process of meeting those needs, is worth celebrating.

The AOP has had a good 2024. But the tasks of 2025, 2026 and the years beyond will require us to display the sorts of qualities which Mickey Davies was clearly showing 80 years ago.