Medical innovation in ophthalmology

A growing and ageing population has led to an increase in the demand for high-quality care from all medical services, ophthalmology being no exception. In the United Kingdom, there are currently over seven million ophthalmology outpatient appointments each year. In the future, patient-led medical innovation will allow for greater autonomy and engagement by patients: access to portable or home-based medical devices are likely to improve service capacity further in ophthalmology. The two main applications for OCT in ophthalmology are medical retina and glaucoma; universally, any patient who now attends a clinic will undergo this investigation. Virtual clinics are now routinely deployed in busy eye departments for either video conferencing or having patients attend for a diagnostics-only appointment, for example a glaucoma patient undergoing visual field testing and optical coherence tomography (OCT) which are later reviewed by a clinician who can then inform the patient whether there needs to be any intervention.