For Optometry Australia (OA), this year’s Optometry Clinical Conference (OCC) represented more than another annual gathering of the profession. It was the first held under the banner of a newly unified national organisation, bringing with it conversations about the profession’s direction, the technologies shaping practice, and the clinical challenges confronting optometrists.
Across two days at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, those bigger questions sat alongside the practical – how to manage myopia, recognise neuro-ophthalmic red flags, prepare patients for surgery, support autistic patients in the clinic, and even learn more effectively.
The Welcome to Country set a reflective tone before Optometry Australia’s flagship conference turned to matters of governance, policy, and clinical practice. Lectures and a series of roadshows provided ample opportunities for personal development as well as education in special areas of interest.
OA’s Acting President, Theo Charalambous, introduced the inaugural national board, congratulating the newly elected state and territory directors and thanking the transitional directors and staff who had steered the organisation through the transition period. The new directors: Tzu-Hsuan (Shaun) Chang (NSW/ACT), Nelofar (Nellie) Dean (Vic), Kristin Guppy (SA/NT), Fiona Moore (Qld), Lisa Kingshott (Tas), and Michael (Alex) Craig (WA), join existing directors: Mr Charalambous (Vic), Shuvagata Bose (Qld, acting Vice President), Elise Pocknee-Clem (SA), Tim Grant (NSW/ACT), as well as non-optometrists, Jenny Milakos (Vic), and Ramy Aziz (NSW).
Mr Charalambous framed unification as a platform for more connected member services, and a more coherent national voice for the profession. He invited members to help shape the organisation’s priorities, including through a workforce consultation soon to be rolled out across the country.
Guardrails for AI: Mark Nevin’s Address
OA’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr Mark Nevin, addressed the profession’s “twin duties” in overseeing the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in eye care.
Mr Nevin referred delegates to the third national policy roadmap recently released by the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (AAAiH), which sets out priorities around governance, workforce training, leadership and consumer participation in AI-enabled care, alongside a push to build sovereign AI capability grounded in high-quality research.1
He outlined five guardrails he believes should underpin AI adoption in optometry: ethics, regulation, practice standards, workforce responsibilities, and consumer involvement. He said the most clinically relevant AI tools in optometry are likely to be captured as ‘software as a medical device’ under Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) rules and advised that the TGA had updated its guidance earlier this year to keep pace with the technology.
Mr Nevin highlighted radiology as a sector that has led the way on AI adoption. He suggested optometry should draw on the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists’ early work on ethical principles, updated training curricula, and practice standards for AI deployment, when developing its own frameworks.
For OA, the next steps include work on digital health foundations, ethical frameworks specific to eye care, updated training standards, and support for practice-level pilots. He said the organisation’s role is to help members adopt AI safely and ethically rather than dictating a single path forward.
The Neuroscience of Learning
Neuroscientist and University of Tasmania senior lecturer Dr Lila Landowski presented at OCC for the second time, offering practical advice on how to learn and retain information more effectively. This was framed around six factors supported by neuroscience: attention, alertness, sleep, repetition, breaks, and mistakes.
Dr Landowski explained that neuroplasticity, the brain’s capacity to form and strengthen synaptic connections through experience, underpins all learning, and that while this capacity declines with age, deliberate strategies can offset that decline. She covered practical measures, such as minimising phone- and social media-related distractions, using short bursts of exercise to boost alertness, prioritising sleep to consolidate short-term memories into long-term storage, maintaining a healthy diet, and returning to material across multiple sessions rather than relying on single exposure. Taking a short break after a learning session, rather than immediately moving on to something else, allows new neural connections time to stabilise.
Concluding the presentation, Dr Landowski reassured delegates that mistakes are not a sign of failure but a biological cue that opens a window for learning.
Managing Stress and Burnout
Dr Landowski also delivered a workshop on the neuroscience of chronic stress. Sustained stress, she explained, enlarges the amygdala, the brain’s emotion-processing centre, while shrinking and disconnecting the prefrontal cortex responsible for decision making, and reducing the hippocampus’ capacity to consolidate memory. The result is a person who is more reactive, more forgetful, and less able to see another’s perspective. She linked chronic stress to all six leading causes of death, and noted its outsized effect on people who experience what she termed social threat, such as being a minority in a room. These people release roughly three times as much cortisol as their peers in equivalent situations.
Tips to manage stress and burnout included socialising, which releases oxytocin that suppresses cortisol; regular exercise, which triggers new brain cell growth; and 20 minutes in nature, which can lower cortisol by around a fifth. Interestingly, simply labelling a difficult emotion measurably calms the amygdala. Dr Landowski closed by reframing stress as a biological tool for meeting a challenge, one that responds to mindset as much as to circumstance.
Barry H. Collins Lecture: Professor Michael Collins
The H. Barry Collins Research Medal, one of Optometry Australia’s most prestigious honours, was awarded this year to Professor Michael Collins of the Queensland University of Technology, recognised for more than three decades of research into the optics and biology of myopia.
Prof Collins reflected on three phases of his career-long interest in myopia: the optics of the eye and how higher-order aberrations and blur influence eye growth; the choroid’s role as a potential short-term biomarker for treatment response; and, most recently, how the eye detects and responds to the direction of blur at a photoreceptor level.
Central to his address was the influence of light and blur. Prof Collins presented evidence that hyperopic blur, arising from sources including higher order aberrations, accommodative lag, peripheral refraction, and the proximity of near-work objects, can drive axial elongation. For children, this effect compounds with time spent on close tasks indoors. He also detailed choroidal thickening as a rapid, measurable response to myopia control optics, atropine and red light therapy, and outlined newer work suggesting photoreceptors may subtly reorient towards the source of light, a blur detection mechanism he likened to phototropism in plants. He suggested this line of research could eventually enable clinicians to use optical coherence tomography (OCT) to predict, within minutes rather than months, whether a given myopia intervention is likely to work for an individual child.
Myopia Control in Practice
Sydney paediatric optometrist Soojin Nam took delegates on a historical tour of myopia management, from the early days of orthokeratology through to the “serendipitous” discovery of low-dose atropine’s efficacy, and the development of defocus incorporated spectacle lens technology. In this presentation, sponsored by HOYA Vision, she used efficacy data spanning multiple trials and up to 11 years of follow-up to illustrate how combination therapies and newer lens designs have progressively improved outcomes, while cautioning that customisation by age and risk profile remains essential, and touching on choroidal thickness as an emerging early indicator of treatment response.
Melbourne paediatric optometrist Emmy Cui continued the discussion on myopia, presenting case studies of children managed with HOYA MiyoSmart and the new MiyoSmart iQ defocus spectacle lenses, as a mono-treatment or in combination with low-dose atropine. She discussed setting realistic expectations, normalising an adaptation period, and communicating long-term risk in terms parents can act on. She also shared results from a local patient survey, in which the majority of families reported straightforward adaptation to new lenses and no adverse effects on vision or sport.
Neuro-Ophthalmology Red Flags
Adelaide-based ophthalmologist Professor Celia Chen delivered a session on assessing the swollen optic disc, built around a central message: disc assessment is not a spot diagnosis; every case needs to be worked through systematically.
Prof Chen opened by noting how often referrals arrive pre-loaded with a diagnosis, such as ‘papilledema’ or ‘query optic neuritis’, before the underlying process has actually been established, and how that language can cause needless anxiety for patients before a proper assessment has taken place. Her preferred approach is to describe only what is observed, disc swelling or elevation, and then methodically work through the diagnosis process.
Once she has established whether the swelling is genuine or a pseudo-swelling such as buried optic disc drusen, she determines whether it is unilateral or bilateral, since the two point down very different diagnostic paths. From there, she reflects on three questions: where is the problem, what is the problem, and what happens next. Answering the first two, she stressed, depends on correlating the appearance of the disc with all five measures of optic nerve function: visual acuity, pupil response, colour vision, brightness sense, and visual field, since a disc can look alarming while function remains intact, or vice versa.
Prof Chen presented a range of cases to demonstrate her process and cautioned that imaging is a valuable tool but not a substitute for clinical reasoning.
She advised optometrists to trust a change in pattern over time as much as any single snapshot, use serial photographs and consistent testing to pick up genuine progression, and to communicate uncertainty honestly with patients rather than assuming the most serious explanation, or the most reassuring one, before the full picture has been assembled.
Dry Eye and Surgery
Ophthalmologist Dr Judy Ku, a glaucoma, cataract and anterior surgeon from Brisbane, gave a case-driven talk on the importance of identifying and treating dry eye and ocular surface disease before patients proceed to cataract, refractive, or glaucoma surgery, and of carefully managing the ocular surface post-surgery.
Dr Ku opened with the scenario every surgeon dreads: a technically excellent cataract operation followed by an unhappy patient, or a glaucoma patient who ceases to use their drops and loses vision as a result. Both outcomes, she argued, are frequently traceable back to unrecognised ocular surface disease. She cited figures showing up to 80% of cataract surgery candidates have some form of ocular surface dysfunction, and up to 65% of glaucoma patients experience ocular surface disease linked to their drops and preservatives, a figure she expects to grow as glaucoma prevalence rises towards a projected 110 million people worldwide by 2040.2
Beyond patient comfort, an unstable tear film distorts keratometry measurements, which can lead to the wrong intraocular lens power being selected, particularly for patients choosing multifocal lenses.
She said optometrists play a key role in ocular surface management as they have more contact and often a stronger rapport with their patients. She encouraged them to screen for tear film instability proactively, even in asymptomatic patients, to remove contact lenses well ahead of biometry, and to begin targeted therapy, whether lubricants, lid hygiene or other measures, four to six weeks before surgery wherever possible. Post surgery, ocular surface treatment should continue, since cataract and refractive procedures can worsen dry eye symptoms in the following six to 12 months, and patients often stop their drops prematurely once they believe treatment is “done”. She encouraged closer two-way communication with local ophthalmologists to coordinate escalation when needed.
Supporting Autistic Patients in the Consulting Room
A practical workshop delivered by Aspect (Autism Spectrum Australia) drew attention to the barriers autistic people can face during eye examinations, and what optometrists can do in response.
The presenters framed the session around research-informed, practical adjustments rather than theory, distributing a printed resource summarising steps that practices and individual clinicians can take, alongside a more detailed article the team has published in Optometry Australia’s journal Clinical and Experimental Optometry. Their guidance centred on the sensory environment of the practice and the predictability of the appointment itself, both identified as significant sources of difficulty for people with autism navigating routine testing.
Growth with Smart Glasses
A panel session on AI and smart glasses, led by Sydney optometrist Michael Yapp, mapped the category into four types: audio-only glasses, camera-equipped glasses currently dominated in Australia by Meta’s Ray-Ban range, augmented reality glasses with heads-up displays, and hearing-assistance glasses. Amy Pillay, EssilorLuxottica’s Professional Affairs Manager, said adoption of smart glasses has broadened well beyond early influencer interest to busy professionals, parents, and travellers. Ray-Ban Metas, fitted with prescription lenses, are now more commonly sold than Metas with plano sun lenses. Independent practice owner John Merrin (Qld) said uptake in his practice remains largely staff led. Prescription lenses for Meta eyewear can only be fitted by Essilor and given the complex technology housed in the frames, frame adjustments are limited. Mr Merrin said that through experience he has decided not to adjust or offer a prescription lens service for frames acquired by customers overseas or online.
OA’s Manager of Professional Services, Sophie Koh, spoke about regulation of smart eyewear, which is gaining global attention due to category expansion. She confirmed the TGA does not currently treat smart glasses as medical devices, and that Australian privacy law has no specific provisions for eyewear with recording functionality, leaving public filming largely unrestricted, even as other jurisdictions move to ban the devices from exam halls and courtrooms. While children under 13 years are not legally able to access social media, there is no restriction on them wearing smart eyewear.
Beyond the novelty factor, the panel agreed there is genuine clinical value in smart eyewear for people with low vision, including voice-guided description of surroundings. Funding pathways for some may exist through the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and My Aged Care. Mr Merrin also spoke of his own use wearing Nuance audio glasses, describing them as “transformative”. Mr Nevin noted the potential for smart glasses to be used by various professions, including engineering and surgery, and urged the profession not to cede the category to electronics retailers, comparing its disruptive potential to ride-share’s effect on taxis.
Pub Choir and Awards
During OCC, Mr Charalambous presented the annual Optometry Queensland Northern Territory Optometrist of the Year Award to Fiona Moore, a respected leader in the industry, who has been “instrumental in achieving a comprehensive understanding of public health in Queensland, strengthening models of eye care, and delivering eye care to Central Qld for decades”. Finalists for the award were Dr Ursula White, Dr Shelley Hopkins, and Hiromi Yoshikawa.
OCC’s trade hall was well attended throughout the event with several delegates describing the opportunity to meet suppliers, explore new technologies and connect with colleagues as a highlight of the event. The networking drinks within the trade exhibition attracted a throng of delegates, many of whom gathered at the stage to participate in the ‘pub choir’. Led by OA’s Ms Koh, with support this year from OA Members Darrell Baker, Carolyn Dingle, Dom Willson and Courtenay Lind, the pub choir has become a permanent fixture at OCC. With the profession feeling the tension of mainstream media attention on workplace conditions and key performance indicators, the pub choir was a joyful unifier that put smiles back on every face – there’s nothing like a sing-along to connect.
OCC 2027 will take place in Adelaide.
