Dear members and relations of the WAEH,

On behalf of the board I would like to send to you our very best wishes for 2022. Never stop being amazed and forever express your creativity and imagination and keep innovating. Let’s hope that we will all be able to travel again in safety and discover new horizons, celebrating the beauty and wonders of the world.

Warm regards,
WAEH Board
Maaike van Zuilen

WAEH New: Sponsored Member 

The WAEH wishes the Lusaka Eye Hospital from Zambia a warm welcome into the global network of eyehospitals. This eyehospital will be mentored by the Wilmer Eye Institute Johns Hopkins.

 
Introduction

Lusaka Eye Hospital was established in 2001 and is a 40 bed medical institution that provides ophthalmology services in Zambia. The hospital also receives clients from some neighboring countries, which include Zimbabwe and Angola and from overseas. The hospital is an Institution under the Seventh-day Adventist church in Zambia. And was established with support from partners that include Operation Eyesight Universal, The Lions of Germany District Rhineland through the Sight First Program of the Lions Clubs International, and Christoffel Blinden Mission (CBM). It has its origins in the blindness prevention program that was established in Yuka and Mwami Hospitals in the Western and Eastern Province respectively.Lusaka Eye Hospital is a not-for-profit organization that provides both fee-paying and non-fee paying services to the Zambian community.

ABOUT Lusaka Eye Hospital

Lusaka Eye Hospital is one of the leading institutions in eye care in Zambia, treating an average of between 17,000 to 20,000 patients with various eye conditions every year. On average, they operate on about 1,600 to 1,800 cases per year, with approximately 750 to 900 being sight-restoring surgeries (cataract cases).

The hospital provides both hospital based and outreach ophthalmology services. For outreach, they target areas that have little or no access to ophthalmology services and have high rates of eye diseases.

Read more here

Moorfields patient receives 3D printed eye

A Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust patient has been supplied with a fully digital 3D printed prosthetic eye on 25 November 2021. He first tried his eye on 11 November alongside a traditional acrylic prosthetic. This new 3D printing process avoids the invasive moulding of the eye socket. This is often so difficult with children that they need a general anaesthetic.

The printed eye is a true biomimic and more realistic, with clearer definition and real depth to the pupil. The way light travels through the full depth of the printed eye is much more natural than current prosthetics, which have the iris hand-painted onto a black disc embedded in the eye, preventing light from passing the full depth of the eye. 

Read more here
Source: Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Date: 16 December 2021

2022 – Call for projects

Each year 2 to 3 projects are led by our member eye hospitals to help shape and improve ophthalmic care on a global scale. Each project can be budgeted with a budget of 7.500 euro. This is paid from the fees of the WAEH membership. We would like to invite all eyehospitals to share their project ideas. 

One of the current projects is the WAEH Medical Outcome project: currently two indicator sets are under development, one for Keratoconus (final March 2022) and one Primary Retinal Detachment (start 2022).

What about the Project Groups?

• They are led by WAEH Members
• Focused on specific themes from Artificial intelligence to Medical outcomes
• Group members network and brainstorm via online Zoom meetings to maximise the impact and reach of sharing knowledge during the projects
• Group members share their lessons learned, knowledge and experience also via the WAEH knowledge hub and via the WAEH newsletter
• Group members host a round table and present their project during the Annual Meeting

Ideas are welcome!
Do you have an idea of something you would like to change or innovate in your Eyehospital? Want to run a WAEH project? Send in your project proposal! Check out the project proposal format. 
For an example, see the project proposal about the Patient Enucleation Education Package – a project ran by Mitchell Wilson from the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital from Melbourne in the most excellent way: project proposal Patient Enucleation Education Package.

Questions? Contact Maaike van Zuilen: maaike.vanzuilen@waeh.org

The Rotterdam Eyehospital

“Involving young physicians in healthcare governance has great value”

The Doctor meets Director program offers 20 talented young healthcare professionals interested in healthcare governance the unique opportunity to spend three days shadowing leading executives in the Dutch healthcare sector. One of the selected candidates is Britt Oomen, obstetrics physician at the Elisabeth Tweestedenziekenhuis in Tilburg. For the second day she walked along with Yvonne Koppelman, chairman of the board of directors of Het Oogziekenhuis Rotterdam.

Read more here
Source: Oogziekenhuis Rotterdam
Date: 16 November 2021

Moorfields Eye Hospital

Research Opportunities at Moorfields (ROAM) wins prestigious Nursing Times award

Read more here
Source: Moorfields Eye Hospital
Date: 24 October 2021

The Royal Victorian Eye And Ear Hospital

Paving the way for AMD research

Last week, the Victorian Honour Roll of Women announced their inductees for 2021, listing 23 inspirational women that have been recognised for their exceptional achievements in a broad range of fields. Among the inductees, the Eye and Ear’s Professor Robyn Guymer MD was included for her ground-breaking research into age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

In the 25 years that ophthalmologist Professor Robyn Guymer has devoted to AMD research, she has been instrumental in helping to more than halve the rate of blindness from this devastating disease.

Read more here
Source: The Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital
Date: 22 November 2021

Visualise Training and Consultancy

How to Become a Sight Loss Champion

Individuals with a visual impairment are just regular people – family members, colleagues, service users, managers and customers – only with sight differences. It’s estimated that more than two million people in the UK live with a visual impairment that is severe enough to have a significant impact on their daily lives. This number is expected to double by 2050 due to ageing, diabetes, obesity and lifestyle factors.

So UK based Visualise Training and Consultancy has developed a course to expand knowledge of visual impairment and how it affects people living with eye conditions both practically and emotionally.

The course is suitable for everyone who interacts with patients living with sight loss including eyecare and health professionals in clinical and non-clinical roles. It has been designed by award winning visual impairment expert Dan Williams who brings an empathetic and solutions based approach, having lived with sight loss from childhood.

The normal price is £30, but by using the discount code waehhalfprice at checkout, you’ll pay just £15.

Learn more here
Date: 6 December 2021

Moorfields

Moorfields/UCL delivering innovative, rapid and safe NHS eye care at Brent Cross shopping centre

Moorfields Eye Hospital has opened a new pop-up diagnostic hub at Brent Cross, in a space that was previously a retail shop, in a unique research collaboration with UCL. This enables some people to be seen closer to their homes, providing a convenient way for them to access diagnostic eye care.
 
The new eye clinic has been designed by a team of UCL architects and scientists led by Professor Paul Foster (NIHR Biomedical Research Centre [BRC] at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology), as part of a new NIHR-supported research project, aimed at enhancing the future delivery of UK and global healthcare. 
 
On entering the hub, patients will have a series of high-tech eye tests in an environment that takes its inspiration from high-efficiency commercial settings such as automotive and aerospace manufacturing. At all times patients will be socially distanced, have far fewer interactions and spend less time indoors – reducing the chance of transmission of Covid-19 and other viruses.
 
Over the next few months, the pop-up clinic will be reconfigured several times using UCL-designed moveable ‘smart’ walls and floating electrical and data ‘umbilical cords’. The aim is to establish the most time-efficient and cost-effective layout for patient throughput. An innovative ‘eye-pod’ will also be studied, in which patients will sit and rotate to have tests on different pieces of equipment in a secure, light- and sound-controlled environment. 

Read more here

Source: Moorfields Eye Hospital
Date: 8 December 2021

January 23 – 29, 2022

Management Priorities in Eye Care Delivery for Heads of Eye Hospitals

This course covers the following topics:

• Increasing patient volumes
• Sustainable outreach mechanisms
• Designing for comprehensive eye care
• Efficient operations
• Building effective teams
• Quality assurance
• Patient-centered care
• Financial management 
• Effective leadership and strategic management

This course is designed for medical and non-medical professionals who are in the senior management and leadership positions of eye hospitals or eye departments. Over the last 19 batches this annual course has trained over 479 eye care leaders from 41 countries.

Register here
Read more here

Questions? Share news?

Do you have a special request? Would you like to organize a webinar or share news? Fill in this WAEH form

Or would you like to be (digitally) connected to a certain person in one of our member eye hospitals? Please feel very welcome to contact Maaike van Zuilen: Maaike.vanzuilen@waeh.org