Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Vision has wrapped up a 10-location roadshow across Australia to launch ACUVUE OASYS MAX 1-Day, with the company flying in its own Dr Kurt Moody from the US to explain the optics and materials in the latest contact lens design.
The launch events kicked off in Melbourne on 27 June where around 180 optometrists and other industry figures learned about the lens design, including insights from Victorian optometrists Ms Jessica Chi and Mr Darran Yeow about their early experience with the product.
It comes after J&J’s ACUVUE OASYS MAX 1-Day spherical contact lens and ACUVUE OASYS MAX 1-Day multifocal contact lens became available in Australia from 1 July 2024.
Some key attributes include J&J’s TearStable Technology, a new technology that is the result of a new manufacturing process that optimises the distribution of J&J’s wetting agent, PVP (polyvinylpyrrolidone). This, the company says, results in a lower evaporation rate that maximises tear-film stability, with a more stable tear film leading to improved comfort and more stable vision.
The second innovation is OptiBlue technology, a selective optical light filter that filters light in the 380-450 nm range or the blue/violet range at 60%, making it the highest-level blue-violet light filter in the industry. The benefit of this filter is to improve vision; J&J has published data that this innovation helps reduce light scatter and increase visual clarity, day and night. In addition, the lenses block 99.9% UVA rays and 100% UVB rays.
Ms Michelle Ho, business unit director at J&J Vision Australia and New Zealand, initiated proceedings outlining the pioneering work of J&J in the contact lens segment, including in 1987 with ACUVUE, the world’s first disposable soft contact lens, and 1-DAY ACUVUE, the world’s first daily disposable contact lens.
She also discussed her journey with myopia that started with a diagnosis at 11-years-old and a pair of glasses. She started wearing contact lenses at 15 and thought she would only be able to wear them for 20 years.
“I’m well beyond that now and I can’t believe I’m still wearing contact lenses today. If I think about my job at J&J, I’ve been fortunate to have insight into the R&D process, and I know that as technology has progressed, it has improved things to a point where I now know I can wear contact lenses into my 70s. That is amazing.”
Dr Moody, as the keynote speaker, was invited to the stage where he held a detailed presentation into the optics and materials involved in the lens while offering prescribing tips for optometrists planning to bring ACUVUE OASYS MAX 1-Day into their offering.
Dr Moody, a practicing optometrist for many years before joining J&J in 2005, was involved in R&D for 13 years and led the team that developed 1-Day ACUVUE MOIST Multifocal. He now holds 11 US and international patents in the contact lens field. Since March 2020, he has been leading the Professional Education group for North America within J&J.
On his latest trip to Australia, he told attendees the ACUVUE OASYS MAX 1-Day had been available in the US for the past two years and had achieved significant market penetration, with the multifocal taking the number one spot. He puts this down to the comfort and vision benefits of the new lens material.
Dr Kurt Moody said the lens had been designed with three major trends in mind since the COVID pandemic. This included people spending more time on digital devices, on average 13 hours a day (a 32% increase), leading to a 60% lowered blink rate, and a new desire for blue light filtering.
And while he said there is no evidence to show the impact of blue light filtering on human health, the basis of building this capability into ACUVUE OASYS MAX 1-Day is based on its visual benefits, helping to reduce starburst, halo and other visual disturbances. (As a side note, incorporating the technology has slightly changed the colour of the lens compared to previous J&J lenses to a more blue-green colour, which is due to the chromophore – a point Dr Moody says can help demonstrate a tangible difference to patients).
Also, in presbyopes, he noted that the tear breakup time reduces by 50% by the age of 50, and that there’s an increase in intraocular light scatter that doubles by the age of 60 due to crystalline lens changes.
He said the ACUVUE OASYS MAX 1-Day multifocal lens, in particular, offered an opportunity for optometrists to become great multifocal soft contact lens fitters. Data he presented showed around 40% of a practice’s soft contact lens wearer base are presbyopes, with 94% anticipating wearing contact lenses into their sixth decade of life. But within two years of becoming presbyopic, 50% drop out of contact lens wear. Dryness, discomfort and vision are the key drivers of this.
“That tells you you’re losing 20% of your patients every single year. How many of us can afford this? That’s why we talk about the opportunity that exists of really becoming great, soft multifocal soft contact lens fitters,” he said.
In designing ACUVUE OASYS MAX 1-Day multifocal, Dr Moody said J&J kept its well-established Pupil Optimised Design, but has now combined this with TearStable Technology and OptiBlue light filter to offer a better experience for wearers.
Interestingly, he said ACUVUE OASYS MAX 1-Day’s TearStable Technology has been shown to optimise wetting agent distribution throughout the lens; prolong tearfilm stability; and even deliver two times lower evaporation rate compared with leading designs from competitors. But it was vision, and not necessarily comfort, that the R&D team were focused on initially.
“When we created MAX 1-Day, we were expecting to see an improvement in vision, and we were getting that. But suddenly, we’re hearing this lens is so much more comfortable than an ACUVUE OASYS 1-Day,” he said.
“It got everybody scratching their head a little bit. We sent the lenses over to our analytical chemists and that’s when we found there was a change in the distribution of PVP. And that was the ‘aha moment’, the realisation that now, as you get a more optimal distribution of PVP, you end up getting a lens that’s more comfortable.”
In turn, ACUVUE OASYS MAX 1-Day has been shown to have a superior coefficient of friction, he said, particularly at the end of the day when contact lenses wearers are most likely to experience discomfort.
Dr Moody said since launching in the US, a common question has been who is better suited to ACUVUE OASYS 1-Day vs ACUVUE OASYS MAX 1-Day. He suggested asking patients three key questions:
- Would you describe your digital device use as heavy or intense?
- Are your contact lenses uncomfortable in parts of the day, especially late in the day?
- Would you be interested in blue light filtering lenses?
“And if they answer yes to any of those three questions, they’re probably a candidate,” he said.
And in presbyopes:
- Do you struggle with reading up close?
- Do you struggle with driving at night?
Practitioner experience
In the panel discussion, Mr Darran Yeow, from Insightful Eye Care, discussed his early experiences with the lens.
As a dry eye sufferer, he tended to avoid or reduce wearing time of contact lenses for himself, but he trialled ACUVUE OASYS MAX 1-Day and was blown away by the results. He’s been able to wear them the entire day from 5.30am until late, including while travelling and on flights, and has been “super impressed” with the comfort.
“A lot of my patients have commented – both in terms of sphere and multifocal wearers, high myopes and hyperopes – that they’ve been amazed with the comfort too. That’s probably the overarching theme; people saying they put the lens in, and it just feels lighter and more comfortable. And the lenses still feel amazing at the end of the day,” he said.
“From a vision perspective, we had one multifocal patient saying, ‘it’s surreal, I can put this contact lens in, and I can see everything at night. I can see the clouds, the trees, all the details.’ He even drove around in different conditions to test out his vision with bright lights and in dark areas, and he was amazed. I had another patient in her mid-20s who is a moderately high myope and she was the same, finding her vision on computer screens so much better, as well as driving at night having incredible vision.”
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