Following Tim Fricke’s work with the Brien Holden Vision Institute team estimating that 50% of people would have myopia by 2050, new work continues to elaborate on global patterns in refractive error and ocular accommodation.

Additional work with the Australian Eye and Ear Health Survey is also examining refractive error coverage rates since the previous national survey 8 years ago.

Health economics can quantify the burden eye/vision conditions place on a community at a point in time, or alternatively, cost of a condition to an individual over a period of time. We have been refining ways of estimating both burden and cost to help individuals and communities to decide whether a prevention or a treatment is valuable. One example is our work on lifetime cost of myopia, which will help families decide which myopia control option/s to invest in and when.

ACO’s clinical services, operating as ACO Eye Health, is long established as a centre of optometric excellence with a focus on accessibility for complex communities and vulnerable individuals. As a data source, ACO Eye Health could help find patterns in vision loss and eye conditions that could guide potential solutions. From 2025, three related projects will aim to generate usable clinical data to assist evolution into a sustainable, patient-centred, united ACO that is better able to help communities it serves both directly and indirectly.