In a landmark moment for the eye care industry, the International Myopia Institute (IMI), published last year a series of eight white papers sponsored by Essilor and other leading industry players.

In a landmark moment for the eye care industry, the International Myopia Institute (IMI), a consensus body of global myopia experts with an independent advisory board, published a series of eight white papers last year. These white papers were sponsored by Essilor and other leading industry players, and provide a comprehensive, evidence-based picture of myopia management by some of the most respected minds in our field.

IMI has now released online the official IMI clinical summaries of the white papers in twelve languages including English, French, Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Portuguese and Japanese, and many more languages as part of their commitment to make evidence-based knowledge free and accessible everywhere.

This ground-breaking effort has already seen important progress in advancing clinical knowledge and practice globally to help eye care professionals better assess and manage the growing epidemic among children.

Gilles Le Saux, Senior Vice President, Research and Foresight, Essilor International, said “We’ve already seen that the statistics for the burden of myopia are worrying, and the level of high myopia and related complications are only going to increase further. Together with IMI, we hope to see a real impact in the advancement of myopia research and practice, particularly to contribute to widespread adoption of myopia management among eye care professionals.”

“IMI creates the unique opportunity to bring together the whole spectrum of stakeholders from different professions and from around the world – which is essential not only to advance research, but also to foster the delivery of existing interventions,” commented Professor Serge Resnikoff, IMI Chair on the institute’s role. The full length white papers covering the areas of definitions, experimental models, interventions, genetics, clinical management, clinical trials, and industry guidelines and ethical considerations, were originally published in a special issue of the high impact journal IOVS in February 2019.

Following the initial success of the IMI in bringing consensus to the areas mentioned above, and the advocacy and recognition of myopia at the WHO level in the first WHO World Report on Vision, the next stage of IMI will involve tackling the areas of myopia that were not yet addressed, and have been identified as areas of urgent need. New task forces have been established with their chairs. These task forces include the impact of myopia, pediatric high myopia, high myopia in adults and their associated complications, preferred practice patterns, environmental risk factors in myopia, and accommodation and binocular vision in myopia. A yearly digest will also be published which will provide an update on the latest myopia research for each IMI section.

Click HERE for the full press release.