Industry professionals in Victoria have written to the editor of Clinical and Experimental Optometry recognising the impact of the Centre for Eye Health’s optometry-led clinical model in reducing the burden of vision loss in the community.

The letter is positive and supportive; written in response to our article “Clinical outcomes of the Centre for Eye Health: an intra-professional optometry-led collaborative eye care clinic in Australia”, which was written by Henrietta Wang and Michael Kalloniatis and published in Clinical and Experimental Optometry earlier this year. The letter also proposes an even more expanded role for optometry-led people-centred eye care in the future!

Our original publication found that over three quarters of patients seen through the Centre for Eye Health pathway were identified being ‘at-risk’ of future vision loss whilst 1.5% of patients wae saw required urgent medical intervention. The WHO World report on vision calls for a shift towards a collaborative model of people-centred eye care. Centre for Eye Health represents a unique and effective clinical model which has the potential to reduce preventable blindness within the community through the early detection of eye diseases through the provision of appropriate collaborative care.

We would like to thank the authors Jeremy J Mathan, Anthony Yao, Brandon Thia, Biswadev Mitra, Amal Dameer, Michael Dong, and Elsie Chan for their interest in our work. The links to their letter, and our original article are below.