Optical Practice Marketing
If you’re struggling to keep up on the digital and marketing side of things in your business, a new service designed to help time- and budget-constrained optometric practices and opticals may help. Optical Practice Marketing provides members with attractive, professional-looking websites that have optometry-specific features and are easily maintained.
Members also have access to a library of print material designs and programs, making it easy to do postcard mailings as well as create indoor and outdoor banners.
Optical Practice Marketing also provides practices with affordable videos, shot in your business location, which then can be easily added to your website. Custom services, such as logo creation, brochures and trade show displays, are also available. Assistance with social media, local pages and search engine optimization rounds out the suite of standard services.
Visit www.opticalpracticemarketing.com.
Patient Education
Eyemaginations Echo
Echo, a new cloud-based platform from Eyemaginations, allows you to communicate with your patients from any Internet-based device, such as an iPad, PC or smartphone. It gives you access to a vast library of peer-reviewed medical content that you can use to create presentations on specific topics to share with patients via email or social media. A new reporting feature allows you to then monitor the success of each presentation by tracking patients’ viewing habits.
Using Echo, you can employ a wide variety of communication strategies from one central location:
• Distribute hundreds of emails at once.
• Easily combine your existing patient list from EMR or other database with Echo.
• Import personalized content to promote your practice, services and preferred vendors.
• Prominently display your website, phone number, email and office hours with each communication.
• Distribute information prior to the appointment, such as new patient forms, directions to the office and preoperative instructions.
The company offers flexible subscription levels that will work for practices of any size.
Visit www.eyemaginations.com.
Mobile Apps
TheRightContact.com Mobile App
Now, eye care professionals can easily search and compare contact lenses and lens care products right from their iPhone or iPad, with a new mobile app from TheRightContact.com.
Available for free in the Apple App Store, the app gives eye care professionals access to the individual parameters of 2,000+ products from more than 150 manufacturers.
Like the website version, TheRightContact mobile app allows users to quickly find base curve, packaging and dozens of other relevant parameters. Articles, videos, glossary, fitting tools, including calculators are all available on this platform. Using push notification technology users can also be notified immediately on product releases, parameter changes and other types of news within the contact lens industry.
The service is free for both professionals and students, but registration is required. Users can log in with their current website login information or register directly within the app.
Visit www.therightcontact.com.
Digital Measurement Device
Shamir SPARK
Using the iPad camera, the new SPARK 3D measuring tool from Shamir automatically calculates all frame measurements based on one picture.
The device fits over an iPad and requires users to download Shamir’s app onto their iPad. It doesn’t require any additional artificial light sources and eliminates the need for bulky measuring clips.
SPARK (Single-shot Panorameter Augmented Reality Kit) replaces Shamir’s previous Panorameter Kit, a manual measurement tool that determined panoramic angle, pantoscopic tilt and vertex distance. This new device takes all of those measurements as well as the fitting height, mono PD, HBOX, VBOX and DBL with one picture.
Visit www.shamirlens.com.
Eyewear Accessories
Ficklets Eyewear Charms
If you’re looking for a way to make your pediatric patients more excited about wearing glasses, Ficklets interchangeable eyewear charms may do the trick. Creator Ros Guerrero came up with the idea to make her daughter feel more comfortable and confident in her glasses. It’s also a money saver for families—allowing kids to give their frames a fresh, updated look without buying a whole new pair of glasses. But these little add-ons can increase profit for the optical, too, with the right placement and promotion.
Derived from the word “fickle,” Flickets allow patients to accessorize and personalize any pair of eyeglasses. With more than 100 charm styles, Ficklets come in a variety of shapes, colors and themes—including sports, animals and even holidays—that allow kids to make their own fashion statement with their glasses. They can be mixed, matched, doubled-up and added to the temple or even the nosepiece of the glasses.
Visit www.flickets.com.
Intraocular Lenses
Trulign Toric
Bausch + Lomb recently received FDA approval for the Trulign Toric posterior chamber intraocular lens, a toric IOL that corrects for astigmatism and has the additional capacity to deliver improved vision across a natural range of focus. It demonstrated improved uncorrected near, intermediate and distance vision in FDA clinical trials.
The Trulign Toric IOL is best suited to patients who have astigmatism and wish to have improved uncorrected near, intermediate and distance vision after cataract surgery. The unique haptic design provides excellent rotational stability, with 96.1% of lenses rotating less than 5º from the day of surgery to four to six months post-op, according to study results.
The Trulign Toric lens is available in cylindrical powers of 1.25D, 2.00D and 2.75D (at the IOL plane), and can correct astigmatism between 0.83D and 2.50D.
Visit www.bausch.com.
Diagnostic Technology
Octopus/Optovue Bundle
Haag-Streit USA and Optovue have joined forces to bundle Haag-Streit’s Octopus perimeter with Optovue’s optical coherence tomography (OCT) technology. The Octopus 900, a 90º full-field projection perimeter, allows for testing in all levels of disease—early detection, tracking progression or performing the most sensitive examinations at the end stage of disease.
RTVue was the first FDA-cleared spectral-domain OCT launched in the US, and also the first OCT device approved for both corneal and retinal imaging. The iVue is the compact version of the RTVue OCT, offering the same scanning speed and resolution as the larger system––which includes scanning and reports for retina, retina nerve fiber and cornea assessment by the clinician.
Optovue will be responsible for sales, installation and training of the combined Octopus/OCT offering in the US, and Haag-Streit will handle ongoing clinical support and technical service.
Visit www.haag-streit-usa.com or www.optovue.com.
Cosmetics for Sensitive Eyes
Zoria Boost
Zoria Boost Lash Intensifying Serum is the first in Ocusoft’s new line of cosmetic products for sensitive eyes. The line will provide practitioners with a wider range of offerings to complement fashion frames, contacts, blepharoplasties and botulinum toxin injections.
Featuring polypeptide technology developed by ophthalmologist and biochemist Lili Fan, MD, Zoria Boost naturally enhances and supports the eyelash growth cycle for dramatically longer, fuller and darker-looking eyelashes, the company says. It is safe for contact lens wearers and those with sensitive eyes.
Through an exclusive distribution agreement between Ocusoft and Dr. Fan, Zoria Boost will be marketed to and distributed by eye care professionals without a prescription. Also available in the cosmetics line is Zoria mascara––a flake-free, hypoallergenic formula for sensitive eyes––as well as Zoria make-up remover and facial skin cleanser.
Zoria Boost will be offered through Ocusoft’s new skin care division and may be ordered online or from your local Ocusoft representative.
Visit www.ocusoft.com.
