CooperVision has formally opened its new global headquarters: a futuristic innovation centre in Southampton, where it hopes practitioners and vision scientists will work in close collaboration with the commercial side of its organisation.
“The Vision Centre is our vision of working for the future,” Francis Erard, CooperVision’s vice president of research and development, told OT during the centre’s official opening this autumn (Thursday 23 September).
Debbie Olive, CooperVision’s chief commercial officer, told OT that the opening represents a big milestone for the organisation.
“We have an incredible opportunity in bringing the teams together: research and development, and our engineering teams, as well as our commercial teams, all in one place,” Olive said.
She explained: “The purpose of that is to make sure we can get our innovation out better, faster, and with more relevance to both patients and to our customers.”
During a tour of the Vision Centre’s in-house contact lens clinic, optometrist Tom Elliott explained to OT the value that he hopes practitioners will get out of visiting the centre.
“We have a one-stop shop – a dedicated space,” he said: “We have high-end equipment. We have many trial lenses available, and we have the ability to see lenses on-eye and hold hands-on workshops.”
Elliott added: “I think that eye care practitioners can learn a lot by visiting the centre. They can have hands-on experience and receive top tips on fitting lenses, making it easier and more simple when they return to practice.”
He emphasised: “Using the state-of-the-art equipment, we can share some ideas and techniques to make contact lens fitting even easier.”
CooperVision has a large number of events lined up for practitioners, Zoe Bull, the organisation’s senior director of category and customer engagement, told OT.
Part of these plans include the use of an immersive room, which Bull explained in more detail to OT.
“It’s really creating a whole new experience of the way we interact with our ECPs,” she said.
“We want to hold workshops, and collaborative events. We want to show the patient journey across the wall: how it is now; how it could be in the future.”
Bull added: “We want to be able to make it so interactive that we can touch the wall and say: ‘this is working; this is not working.’ We can bring to life our innovation within this space.”
Find out more by watching the full video above.
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