EDITOR’S COMMENT
A remote possibility
As you would expect, the General Optical Council’s first business registrant survey provided lots of intriguing data, much of which can be found in this week’s In Focus (page 6).
Innovation was at the core of the results,
with three in every four businesses reporting the introduction of new or improved clinical services to patients over the past three years. An additional one in four claimed to have introduced a clinical service that was entirely new to the market.
As someone who has tracked the progress of online and remote eye care for over a decade, I was particularly keen to find out how businesses were innovating with remote technology. Surprisingly, 5% of independents said they were using the technology currently, ahead of multiples on 4%. I say surprisingly because I wasn’t aware of any independent practices that had adopted the technology. I’d love to hear from any of these who have. Planned use of remote testing was more predictable with over three times as many multiples (10%) looking to rollout within the next two years
compared to 3% of independents.
I then started to think about how this technology would fit in with the ethos of innovation in clinical services for patients. Would remote eye testing make for improved clinical care? I’m not actually sure it would. There are certain cases that make a lot of sense for remote eye care, such as patients in hard-to-reach locations, but I haven’t seen any that offer an improvement over an in-person eye test. All the improvements are on the company side and generally revolve around workforce supply issues. Interestingly, the research found businesses that served patients in cities were more likely to either use, or plan to use, remote sight testing (23%), in comparison to those in towns (8%).
I’m starting to wonder if remote eye testing is solving a problem that patients have asked for.
Editor
CONTENTS
11 Showcase
21 Spor ting frames
NEWS 4 7 Days News from the past week 6 In Focus GOC sur veys optical businesses
for first time
OPINION 8 The Consulting Room
100% quality
PRACTICE 10 Informed
Updates from inside the industr y 11 Showcase
The latest product news
LENSES & DISPENSING 13 Giving low vision high priority
Dispensing optician of the year
14 Optician Awards
Dr Mar tin Smith, Optometrist of the Year 17 A spor ting life through a lens
Lenses to help with spor t 21 Spor ting outlook
Spor ts frames for the summer of spor t
CLINICAL 24 CPD: Vision and cricket
How visual skills affect performance on the cricket field
CLASSIFIED 30 Ser vices 33 Recruitment
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10 May 2024 OPTICIAN 3
