Roshan Thomas, a Vancouver optometrist, and Zeenab Kassam, a Calgary nurse, were among those killed in the hotel attack in Kabul, Afghanistan last Thursday.  

 

In all, nine people, including two young children, were slain when four teenaged gunmen entered the heavily secured Serena Hotel, considered one of the safest spots in the Afghan capital.

 

A mother of three, Roshan Thomas, 60, had worked on humanitarian projects for the past decade as part of the Aga Khan Development Network. Mrs. Thomas and her husband, an ophthalmologist, had provided eye care in the country for five consecutive summers in the 1990s. She had also founded the Sparks Academy Kabul (Omid-e-Afghanistan, which translates as “Afghanistan’s hope” in the Dari language), a school attended by children from different ethnicities and religions.   

 

“I spoke to her a few hours before the incident,” said her son, Karim Thomas, in an interview to the Globe and Mail. “She was doing the work that she loved. She had had some exciting things happen with the education program and she was in very good spirits.”

 

The education program founded by Mrs. Thomas began with 50 students in 2003 and has grown to 900 in six different centres today.

 

Source:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/friends-pay-tribute-to-vancouver-woman-killed-in-kabul/article17613186/

 

The new rules of conduct for Ontario optometrists will take effect April 15, 2014.

 

The new regulation will change the rules concerning conflict of interest, advertising, relationships between optometrists and opticians, and patient access to eye care and prescriptions. The changes are listed in a document released by the Ontario Association of Optometrists (OAO). (http://www.collegeoptom.on.ca/images/pdfs/PM__COI_Guidelines_FINAL.pdf)

 

The OAO is pleased with the implementation of these new changes, particularly the removal of restrictions that prevented optometrists from associating with opticians. “Doctors of optometry will now be able to employ opticians and, further, practice with anyone including optical corporations, as long as the doctor of optometry practices as an independent contractor,” said president Farooq Khan.

 

The College of Optometrists of Ontario also approves the changes. “The public of Ontario will benefit from more options when seeking eye care now that several of the restrictions that prohibited optometrists from working in association with opticians, have been removed,” said Paula Garshowitz, registrar at the College.

Source:

http://www.collegeoptom.on.ca/index.php/resources/news/209-new-professional-misconduct-regulation-including-conflict-of-interest-provisions-effective-april-15-2014

http://www.healio.com/optometry/regulatory-legislative/news/online/144a303c-1e20-4448-9982-39b769ed03da/new-regulation-in-ontario-may-increase-collaboration-between-optometrists-opticians  

 

 

Researchers from Stanford University have developed inexpensive adapters that enable a smartphone to capture very precise images of the eye.

 

The adapters allow anyone with minimal training to take a picture of the front and back of the eye, to share this image securely with other eyecare professionals or to download it to the patient’s electronic record. One of the developers of the device, ophthalmologist Robert Chang, likens it to “Instagram for the eye.”

 

Such a device would be extremely helpful in providing eye care in remote locations or in disadvantaged regions where paying for leading-edge medical equipment is a challenge. This could also accelerate diagnoses in emergency rooms.

 

“Imagine a car accident victim arriving in the emergency department with an eye injury resulting in a hyphema. Normally the physician would have to describe this finding in the patient’s record with words alone. Smartphones today not only have the camera resolution to supplement those words with a high-resolution photo, but also the data-transfer capability to upload that photo securely to the medical record in a matter of seconds,” explained Dr. Chang.

Source:

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140307111056.htm

 

A remote screening system performed well in identifying patients with treatable diabetic eye disease.

 

The researchers evaluated the performance of the EyePACS tele-ophthalmology system to detect edema resulting from leaky blood vessels at the back of the eye. “Edema that is detected close to the line of sight can and should be treated to slow or avoid any loss of vision,” said Dr. Anthony Adams, editor-in-chief of Optometry and Vision Science. “However about one-third of all people with diabetes don’t realize they have diabetes and about 20% of those with recently diagnosed diabetes already have some changes in the blood vessels.”

 

The study included 103 adults with type 2 diabetes, seen at a public health clinic, who were considered at high risk for macular edema. A digital camera was used to take a magnified view of the interior of the eye, without the use of eye drops to dilate the pupil. The photos were sent over the Internet to ophthalmologists, who looked for hard exudates as an indicator of macular edema. “The presence of hard exudates allowed correct detection of actual edema 90% of the time,” explained Dr. Adams.

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140225111816.htm

IRIS The Visual Group announced that it has partnered with Nikon to launch MyLab^TM, an integrated Nikon-Iris laboratory. Since IRIS opened a lab in the spring of 2013, its stores have been integrating MyLab^TMtechnology to meet growing demands.

MyLab^TM provides patients with exclusive IRIS products, namely Nikon’s brand new digital progressive lens series, the I-View Series2.

Thanks to this new association, the MyLab^TM integrated lab has access to the latest generation of manufacturing equipment, allowing it to produce high-quality lenses that are manufactured and tested with precision and speed.

“Our partnership will prove that vertical cooperation is more effective than vertical integration,” said Dr. Francis Jean, optometrist and president of IRIS.

Nikon Optical Canada’s president, Pierre Longerna, says that, on behalf of Nikon, he is proud “to be associated with IRIS in the creation of MyLab^TM, a specialized structure that offers IRIS patients the most sophisticated Nikon lenses available.”

 

Source: Iris, The Visual Group