Research

Are you an optometrist or dispensing optician accredited to provide the Easy Eyecare Pathway?

If yes, we would like to hear your thoughts and any experiences of delivering the service for autistic people.

Autistic adults can face a variety of challenges when accessing standard eye examinations. Researchers at The University of Manchester are investigating if the Easy Eyecare Pathway facilitates more accessible eyecare for autistic people.

To take part, you need to be an optometrist or dispensing optician accredited to deliver the Easy Eyecare Pathway. You will be invited to an online focus group to understand how prepared and supported you feel in seeing autistic patients as part of the pathway. The focus group will take about 1 hour and you will be reimbursed to for your time. We will do our best to accommodate a convenient date/time for you.

This study is being conducted by Dr Ketan Parmar, Dr Emma Gowen, Dr Sarah Rhodes and Dr Kathy Leadbitter (The University of Manchester), and Lisa Donaldson (SeeAbility).

For more information, please contact: ketan.parmar@manchester.ac.uk. This study has received approval from The University of Manchester’s Research Ethics Committee.

This short survey for UK optometrists looks at their confidence in assessing and managing binocular vision.

To take part, you must be a UK fully qualified optometrist registered with the General Optical Council.

The survey will involve rating your confidence to conduct and interpret binocular vision tests, and manage a patient with a suspect binocular vision problem. You will have the opportunity to enter a prize draw upon completion.

You can access the survey please click here.

The survey will remain open until the end of April 2026.

This study is being conducted by Dr Ketan Parmar, Dr Catherine Porter and Amina Bashir (The university of Manchester, and Kate Vernazza (Manchester Royal Eye Hospital).

For more information: Please follow the survey link which provides further study details and a complete Participant Information Sheet. If after this you still have questions, please email ketan.parmar@manchester.ac.uk .

This project has been reviewed and approved by the University of Manchester Proportionate Research Ethics Committee.

Foresight is inviting optometrists and optical care providers to partner with them in building the world’s most advanced retinal imaging (fundus and OCT) database to develop novel digital tools and techniques to enhance and expand the range of services that can be offered by optometry practices in the future.

Your contributions will help them build a secure, de-identified database of retinal imaging to enable research groups to develop:

• New clinical pathways to streamline referral triage and quality benchmarking.
• Longitudinal analysis of disease progression in real-world settings.
• AI tools to assist in early detection, staging, and classification of multiple diseases.

Foresight offer a compensation structure for partnering optometry practices.

If you would like us to send more information about this project and details on how to get involved, please contact us at researchteam@college-optometrists.org.

PES’s research page includes a collection of articles, papers, and reports that may be of interest to LOCs.