Further consolidation of the national optometry market, controversy over medical workforce changes and an update on the world’s first whole-eye transplant were among the major headlines shaping the Australian ophthalmic sector in 2024.
Key business highlights
If there was a gong for the biggest and most frequent business news in 2024, it would have gone to EssilorLuxottica. One can feel the momentum building behind the world’s largest optical company, since the two giants joined forces in 2018.
Locally, the biggest news came in January with the acquisition of EyeQ Optometrists and its 25 practices. Founded in 2007, the Australian-owned, optometrist-led company has a nationwide presence, with the majority in New South Wales. After “regular approaches from interested parties” the founders decided the best fit was EssilorLuxottica which was attracted to “the complementary nature of its practice network” and will retain the EyeQ brand.
Globally, EssilorLuxottica acquired an 80% stake in Heidelberg Engineering, best known for its high-end OCT machines, which coincided with another thought-provoking deal – taking over the Supreme clothing brand for AU$2.2 billion.
The other big local acquisition of the year was George & Matilda (G&M) Eyecare’s deal with National Optical Care. Involving 26 practices, it’s the biggest in G&M’s eight-year history. But the network did several smaller acquisitions throughout the year, with 35 in total.
Owndays is one to watch too. The Japanese optical retailer – with more than 550 stores globally – moved the dial in Australia by opening two locations at Westfield Hurstville and Westfield Burwood. It now has four locations here.
Specsavers’ strong presence in Australia was confirmed in some impressive revenue figures. The Australian business contributed £874.5 million (AU$1.69 billion) to its global revenue of £4.01b (AU$7.74b) to February 2024. That’s 17.7% above the previous year and comfortably places Australia as Specsavers’ second biggest market.
The independent market also performed well in tough economic conditions. Eyecare Plus grew above 7% on average across its network and is expected to continue this momentum with initiatives like its new Entrepreneurs Club to really take root in 2025.
Workforce issues
Two issues dominated workforce issues this year: bolstering the volume of medical professionals in Australia, and remote optometry consultations.
On the former, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) has streamlined the registration process – as recommended in the ‘Kruk’ independent review – resulting in a surge of new international medical practitioners, with 1,205 more registered in the 2023-24 financial year than in the previous 12 months.
With ophthalmology to be targeted in 2025, the Australian Society of Ophthalmologists (ASO) fears the policy-shift will end up sidelining RANZCO and other medical colleges from the vetting process. And the Royal Australian College of GPs has put health ministers on notice, stating they bear all responsibility for anything that goes wrong with their “rushed process”.
Remote optometry took off in the Australian optometric landscape in 2024. OPSM began rolling this out where patients are taken through the consultation alongside a trained technician, while the optometrist beams in remotely from another part of Australia.
With Specsavers also developing its own model, it’s hoped this new approach – supported by high-tech systems – will improve eyecare access in hard-to-staff areas of the country while offering newfound workforce flexibility.
As Specsavers celebrated its biggest graduate cohort in 2024 with 246 joining the business, the national optometry workforce surpassed 7,000. A quarter of Australian optometrists are now also 29 years or under.
Contributing to this, 40 new optometrists entered the workforce as part of the inaugural graduate cohort from the University of Western Australia optometry school, with every student securing employment and 90% staying to work in WA.
Key decisions and policies
There were some noteworthy changes to Medicare from March 2024. One of the biggest was a new item for a third visual field test in a 12-month period for patients with a high risk of glaucoma progression.
Other changes related to contact lenses where the government agreed to combine 10921, 10922, 10923 and 10925 into a single item and reword the explanatory notes to remove the requirement to deliver the lens.
Also, for foreign body removal the descriptor was amended for 10944 to clarify the requirement for complete removal of the rust ring with a ferrous embedded foreign body, and to provide more clarity around when this item can be claimed.
Optometrists and ophthalmologists faced another Ahpra registration fee hike. Even though it was modest – optometrists will pay a $14 increase (4.1%) and ophthalmologists and other medical professionals $32 more (3.2%).
Amid an Ahpra crackdown on non-surgical cosmetic procedures, optometrists seeking to expand into “ocular aesthetics” – with things like intense pulsed light, bipolar radiofrequency and micro needling – were urged to consider implications around their professional indemnity insurance (PII) cover, and remain on top of proposed regulations determining how these can be marketed to the public.
Changes may be afoot for ophthalmologists over 70 as data revealed complaints jump significantly as doctors get older. The Medical Board of Australia wants to introduce general health checks with a GP for late career doctors in a bid to improve public safety.
The Labor Government’s election promise for 60-day scripts also became a reality for ophthalmic patients seeking dry eye and glaucoma medications in 2024.
People and leadership
In one of Insight’s most-read stories of the year, five Australians made The Ophthalmologist magazine’s Power List. They were Melbourne’s Professor Keith Martin and Professor Robyn Guymer, Adelaide’s Dr Ben LaHood, Sydney’s Professor Stephanie Watson, and Western Australian Professor David Mackey.
The sector shone in both the Australia Day and King’s Birthday honours.
On Australia Day, Emeritus Professor Christian Lueck AM, retired Melbourne optometrist Mr Michael Aitken OAM, and Ms Sandra Knight OAM for her contributions to low vision, were recognised.
For Kings Birthday, six industry figures were acknowledged. They were: ophthalmologists Professor Glen Gole AM, Dr Diana Semmonds AM, Dr James Elder OAM, Northern Territory optometrist Ms Helen Summers OAM, and Ms Emma Elizabeth Stanford, a senior research fellow in Indigenous Eye Health Unit in Melbourne.
The Optometry Board of Australia appointed a new chair in Mr Stuart Aamodt, an independent optometrist from Perth.
CERA’s deputy director and head of ophthalmic neuroscience, Professor Peter van Wijngaarden, is now leading The Florey, the largest brain research centre in the Southern Hemisphere. He is continuing his association with CERA as an honorary researcher.
Prominent Australian optometry academic Professor Sharon Bentley, from Queensland University of Technology, was appointed the new dean of the University of California, Berkeley, optometry school.
There were some big movements in ophthalmology too. Dr Justin Sherwin became the new director of Peninsula Eye Centre, Mornington, previously operated by Dr Rick Wolfe for more than 35 years. Dr Loren Rose started at Sydney Eyecare Burwood as a director, and Dr Eve Hsing and Dr Delia Wang joined OKKO Eye Specialist Centre in Queensland.
Optical Dispensers Australia reshuffled its advisory board, with Tokai Optical Australia general manager Mr Justin Chiang and Opticare director Mr Michael Nasser joining Ms Jessica Kingsley – a technical sales and product application specialist at ZEISS Vision Care ANZ – and Will Street Eyecare (Bendigo, Victoria) optical dispenser-practice manager Ms Sarah Thompson.
Therapies and equipment
Rayner’s new spiral intraocular lens (IOL) – a world-first design called Galaxy and Galaxy Toric – was one of the big product announcements for 2024. It has Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) approval and will be available through reimbursement soon.
The TGA also approved the evolution of two key products in the ophthalmic sector.
Eylea 8mg, a higher dose of aflibercept allowing for longer treatment intervals, was cleared for adults with neovascular aged-related macular degeneration (nAMD) and diabetic macular oedema (DME).
Glaukos’ new iStent infinite Trabecular Micro-Bypass System was approved too; the key upgrade being the inclusion of three stents – as opposed to two – preloaded into a newly designed auto-injection system offering unlimited delivery attempts.
Australian-based Eyerising International, whose repeated low-level red-light (RLRL) therapy was approved for myopia in 2023, addressed safety concerns about its device. The company responded to several “inaccuracies and misrepresentations” in a paper published in Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics (OPO) journal. In other news, the Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) introduced the company’s RLRL for its myopia patients.
It was hoped Australia would have its first-ever approved therapy for geographic atrophy in 2024, but this didn’t eventuate.
One of Australia’s foremost macular disease experts, Professor Robyn Guymer, said the biggest challenge for the two leading drugs has been obtaining market clearance in Europe. Despite them being approved in the US, one issue has been that the trials were not able to show a visual acuity benefit in the treatment group. But she questioned the emphasis on this when it’s all about how much longer central foveal vision can be saved. Plus, it’s common to have good visual acuity until very late in the disease.
It was also a big year for ophthalmic microscope innovations, with Bausch + Lomb installing its first Australian SeeLuma at Mater Private Hospital Redland in Brisbane under Dr Sunil Warrier, and ZEISS releasing its ARTEVO 850 3D visualisation system and ARTEVO 750 microscope.
Alcon released the 1.5 update for its NGENUITY 3D visualisation system, and at RANZCO unveiled its new UNITY Vitreoretinal Cataract System and UNITY Cataract System, to replace the Constellation Vision System and Centurion Vision System with Active Sentry, respectively.
Key events and trade shows
O-SHOW24 was a success at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion in May, concluding with close to 1,000 visitors over two days. Hot on the heels of the event, the Optical Distributors and Manufacturers Association (ODMA) announced a shake-up of its events program with ODMAFair returning to Sydney in June 2025. The organisation is living up to its reputation as a leader in this space, creating new efficiencies across the sector by combining the event with the Australasian College of Behavioural Optometrists annual conference – ACBO Connect 2025 – and Optometry NSW/ACT’s Super Sunday clinical conference.
AUSCRS 2024 on Hamilton Island was a highlight, with the emergence of extended depth of focus (EDOF) IOLs taking centre stage at an event that was both fun and scientifically sound.
The Specsavers Clinical Conference – now in its 13th year – was a big hit too. This time it was on the Gold Coast with more than 400 optometrists attending in-person and another 450-plus watching online from around Australia and New Zealand.
As is tradition, the RANZCO Congress rounded out the year with some heavy hitting speakers from Australia and abroad. But it was outgoing president Dr Grant Raymond’s comments about the college’s future relevance that made everyone sit up and take note.
At the Adelaide meeting, he said the college had never been under greater government scrutiny, with its power to assess the suitability of specialist international medical graduates (SIMGs) and accredit public hospital training posts in jeopardy.
“Should SIMG assessment and hospital training post accreditation be taken away from colleges, RANZCO’s role will be substantively changed. RANZCO is somewhat a recipient of collateral damage from some problematic issues with other colleges,” he said.
Research and breakthroughs
The ophthalmic sector received an update on how the world’s first whole eye and facial transplant was progressing. After 18 months, the team of more than 140 surgeons reported no sign of rejection and some indication of retinal response to light stimuli.
The promise of CRISPR gene therapy took another encouraging stride after the landmark BRILLIANCE phase 1/2 trial demonstrated 11 out of 14 treated participants experienced some improvements in vision and quality-of-life measures. All were born with a form of Leber congenital amaurosis caused by mutations in the centrosomal protein 290 (CEP290) gene. The trial included the first patient to ever receive a CRISPR-based investigational medicine directly inside the body.
US cataract surgeon Dr David Chang debuted a novel robotic cataract surgery procedure on a porcine eye at the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) conference.
A deeper analysis of the well-known Age-Related Eye Diseases Studies (AREDS and AREDS2) revealed something important for eyecare professionals: that certain supplements can slow disease progression in geographic atrophy. Previously, AREDS2 supplements were known to slow intermediate to late AMD.
Locally, a study published in Public Health Research & Practice by UNSW researcher Dr Angelica Ly, found around a quarter of Australian eyecare patients are avoiding treatment due to cost reasons, pointing to the impact of declining Medicare rebates and a mismatch between subsidised care and practising patterns.
In significant local research grants, at least eight ophthalmic research projects were awarded as part of the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) program.
The big winners were Flinders University’s Professor Jamie Craig and Professor Justine Smith for their respective projects on:’Expanding the indications for polygenic risk testing in glaucoma’ ($2,476,520); and ‘Addressing the greatest unmet needs in uveitis’ ($2,953,040).
Associate Professor Andrew White, from the Centre for Vision Research at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research in NSW, received Glaucoma Australia’s 2024 Quinlivan research grant. He will use the funding to focus on the development of Irbesartan as a potential therapeutic agent for glaucoma.
More reading
RANZCO roundup: highlights from the 2024 congress
Five Australian ophthalmologists make 2024 Power List
US agency spending $195m on developing first-ever whole eye transplant
