LEADERS NETWORK TO DEVELOP SOLUTIONS TO TOP CHALLENGES

ECL launches “Visionaries” program

Eye Care Leaders (ECL) recently announced the launch of Eye Care Visionaries (eyecarevisionaries.com ), a program that brings together leaders in ophthalmology and optometry to tackle the top challenges faced by eye-care practices. In this members-only program, participants will have opportunities to network with other physicians, administrators and industry leaders through in-person events and online forums. Additionally, members will have access to a dedicated website that will offer exclusive content, such as benchmarking data and whitepapers.

The Visionaries program is designed to help practices improve their performance and profitability. It will address issues such as compliance, risk, declining reimbursement, and competition, as well as pressures on costs, profitability, and efficiency.

“We believe looking within the eye-care industry, bringing together the most forward-thinking and insightful individuals through the Visionaries program will result in not only connecting eye-care leaders to each other, but also will develop real solutions to the most difficult problems,” says Jim Alland, president of ECL, a family of eight companies that offer a suite of EHR and business solutions.

The program launched in January with a roundtable event that discussed how to transform regulations “from burden to benefit.” Moderated by Tracy Kenniff, practice administrator at Eye and LASIK Center, Greenville, MA, the roundtable included Kevin Corcoran, president of Corcoran Consulting; Philip Isham, executive consultant of ECP Advisor Group; Thomas Samuelson, MD, Minnesota Eye Consultants; William Trattler, MD, Florida International University College of Medicine; Robert Wade, Esq, Wade, Goldstein, Landau & Abruzzo, PC; and Rhonda Buckholtz, VP Strategic Development, ECL.

For more information or to apply to the program, visit eyecarevisionaries.com .

DEVICE ENABLES A FIRST IN TREATMENT

Robot helps surgeon to operate on a patient with retinal vein occlusion

With the help of a specially designed robot, surgeons at the University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium successfully removed a clot from a blood vessel in a retinal vein occlusion (RVO) patient. The robot uses a specially designed .03-mm needle — three times thinner than a human hair. The surgeon guides the needle, which injects a thrombolytic drug into the patient’s retinal vein. The robot eliminates vibration to stabilize the procedure and increase the precision, which is necessary due to the small width of the retinal vein.

“The robotic device enables us to treat the cause of the thrombosis in the retina for the first time,” says Prof. Peter Stalmans, MD, an eye surgeon at the University Hospitals Leuven. “I am, therefore, looking forward to what is next. If we succeed, we will literally be able to make blind people see again.”

For more information, visit http://www.eye-surgery-robot.be .