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03 May 2022
Contact lens manufacturer, CooperVision, has launched an online tool designed to support practitioners in offering myopia management.
The downloadable resource details the seven steps that the company says eye care practitioners (ECPs) should consider when seeking to introduce myopia management into practice, and provides advice for each.
The plan has been created in collaboration with key opinion leaders in myopia who represent a range of disciplines and who have been offering myopia management to patients for a number of years.
Speaking exclusively to OT about the action plan, optometrist and CooperVision’s head of professional services for the UK and Ireland, Christina Olner, explained: “We wanted to create something that was easily accessible in order to help ECPs to get started in myopia management if it is not something they are currently doing.”
Olner explained that as a result, “there is a recognition that all ECPs will be faced with an increased presentation of myopic children in their practices over the coming years and consequently there is a need for more ECPs to become engaged and get involved in myopia management in order to allow patients and their parents to make informed choices about their eye care.”
The steps in the action plan have been designed to acknowledge and demystify the main barriers that the manufacturer often hears stated as reasons holding ECPs back from offering myopia management, including the required skillset to fit lenses, and the confidence to raise the topic with parents and mange concerns.
On fitting myopia management contact lenses, Olner stressed: “We hear ECPs say that they feel that they do not have the expertise to fit myopia management lenses, but we know that, using MiSight 1 day as an example, this requires only the skill needed for fitting soft contact lenses.”
Olner encouraged ECPs to “use the action plan as both a resource and a reference tool in order to learn from their peers when they are faced with barriers.”
Equally there is a wealth of evidence referred to in the plan, providing ECPs with the opportunity to unpick that evidence utilising some of the peer reviewed journal articles that underpin the content,” she added.
ECPs who fed into the action plan include: optometrist and clinical director, Keyur Patel; optometrist and immediate past president of the British Contact Lens Association, Indie Grewal; senior optometrist, Luke Allen; consultant ophthalmologist, John Bolger; therapeutic optometrist and clinical advisor for the College of Optometrists, Paramdeep Bilkhu; clinical lead optometrist, Rebecca Donnelly, and professor of optometry, Nicola Logan.
Visit CooperVision’s website to download the action plan.
The downloadable resource details the seven steps that the company says eye care practitioners (ECPs) should consider when seeking to introduce myopia management into practice, and provides advice for each.
The plan has been created in collaboration with key opinion leaders in myopia who represent a range of disciplines and who have been offering myopia management to patients for a number of years.
Speaking exclusively to OT about the action plan, optometrist and CooperVision’s head of professional services for the UK and Ireland, Christina Olner, explained: “We wanted to create something that was easily accessible in order to help ECPs to get started in myopia management if it is not something they are currently doing.”
What the data says
Olner highlighted predictions that “50% of the world’s population will be myopic by 2050,” adding “what’s perhaps more pertinent for those in the UK is that, on our own shores, myopia has more than doubled over the last 50 years in children between the ages of 10 and 16.”
Christina Olner
The steps in the action plan have been designed to acknowledge and demystify the main barriers that the manufacturer often hears stated as reasons holding ECPs back from offering myopia management, including the required skillset to fit lenses, and the confidence to raise the topic with parents and mange concerns.
On fitting myopia management contact lenses, Olner stressed: “We hear ECPs say that they feel that they do not have the expertise to fit myopia management lenses, but we know that, using MiSight 1 day as an example, this requires only the skill needed for fitting soft contact lenses.”
Olner encouraged ECPs to “use the action plan as both a resource and a reference tool in order to learn from their peers when they are faced with barriers.”
Equally there is a wealth of evidence referred to in the plan, providing ECPs with the opportunity to unpick that evidence utilising some of the peer reviewed journal articles that underpin the content,” she added.
ECPs who fed into the action plan include: optometrist and clinical director, Keyur Patel; optometrist and immediate past president of the British Contact Lens Association, Indie Grewal; senior optometrist, Luke Allen; consultant ophthalmologist, John Bolger; therapeutic optometrist and clinical advisor for the College of Optometrists, Paramdeep Bilkhu; clinical lead optometrist, Rebecca Donnelly, and professor of optometry, Nicola Logan.
Visit CooperVision’s website to download the action plan.
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