INNOVA , ZEISS AND TOPCON RESPONDING TO DIAGNOSTIC NEEDS THROUGH TECH INNOVATION
By Troy Patterson
Eyecare diagnostic equipment companies are responding to trends in health care by branching out into technologies that are advancing toward mainstream usage .
Innova ' s Wayne Stobie , director of marketing , says initially ophthalmology and eventually optometry , will benefit from the advances that are coming down the pipe .
Advances in Optical Coherence Tomography ( OCT ) show a common trend across companies like Innova , Zeiss and Topcon , which continue to innovate and , with some introducing technologies that were newly approved in late 2016 .
“ There continues to be a lot of interest in the OCT technologies for diagnostics , and we ' re seeing more of that ,” Stobie said . “ So we ' re going tocontinue attending events and training people on how to use OCTs for diagnostics .”
Stobie said there ' s some new OCT technology , like Innova ' s OCT angiography machine Nidek OCT RS3000 Angioscan , that has yet to find a mainstream place in the optometric world .
Stobie says the technology will be a “ distraction ” to medical professionals because of the promise it shows in its diagnosis of growing conditions like glaucoma , macular degeneration and dry eye .
“ The technology shows the vasculature in the eye and with some diseases , it ' s starting to look good for seeing things before they happen , like glaucoma for example ,” he says .
“ It ' ll be an ophthalmology thing to start off with until they figure it out , and professionals pass down the technological know-how . And then it will become an optometry thing to be able to do as early of diagnostics as possible .”
Stobie says the challenge currently is the technology can show blood vessels non-invasively , without the use of injections , right down to eight micron capillaries , but the use of that information isn ' t able to be widely utilized yet .
“ The immediate need is in the ophthalmology world where they ' re doing injections for macular degeneration and some diabetic retinopathy ,” Stobie said . “ In those cases , to be able to confirm that it ' s working and to follow the changes you ' re sticking a needle in their eye essentially , which often requires a hospital visit because there ' s potential anaphylactic reaction . ( OCT angiography ) is something I can do anywhere , to anybody in 30 seconds without an injection and without any problems and I get this similar information . That ' s really exciting and a lot of people are very excited about it .”
Research is starting to show there are very early changes in some of the disease progressions that can be seen within the
34 Optical Prism | March 2017