Here’s a quick look at some industry news you may have missed this week.
- Modernizing Medicine will be offering a free webinar, "How the MACRA Final Rule Impacts Ophthalmologists," on Thursday, November 10 at 12pm EST. The hour-long discussion will discuss how to decode the new system, including potential future incentive payments, meaningful use and PQRS payments, and effective business intelligence tools.
- Researchers at the University of Oregon are studying the way mice use their vision in an effort to learn more about how human brains make decisions based on visual cues.
- A new study from the University of Copenhagen says recordings of gaze data — within a few seconds — can reveal whether a word causes a reader problems. This could be used to alleviate reading problems with software that offers translations of difficult words or suggest easier texts as soon as readers experience problems.
- Researchers at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have found revamping front-line multi-drug chemotherapy for retinoblastoma to include topotecan helped to maintain high cure rates for the eye cancer, while preserving patients' vision and reducing their risk of treatment-related leukemia.
- Another reason to put away smartphones for a little while — children who use smartphones, tablets and other such devices at bedtime have over double the risk of poor sleep compared to kids without access to such devices, according to a new study from King's College London.
- Dr. Rohit Varna, interim dean of the Keck School of Medicine of USC and director of the USC Roski Eye Institute recently spoke at U.S. News & World Report's Healthcare of Tomorrow Leadership Forum on the "Telemedicine Comes of Age" panel. Varna was reportedly the only ophthalmologist speaking at the event.
- Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai recently signed an agreement with Al Jalila Children’s — the UAE's first dedicated pediatric hospital — for the provision of pediatric ophthalmology services by Moorfields in Al Jalila Children’s as of October 27, 2016.
- New York City start-up Hubble Contacts is reportedly launching a business model offering customers high quality, yet affordable daily disposable lenses. According to an article on TechCrunch, Hubble will be offering memberships for monthly lens supplies and customers will need to use a valid prescription to register.
- Salutaris Medical Devices, Inc. received ISO 13485:2003 certification, completing a critical step towards commercialization of the SalutarisMD technology for the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD).
- Second Sight Medical Products, Inc. announced the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized its Medicare hospital outpatient payment rate of $150,000.50 for calendar year 2017. The payment for the surgical procedure includes the cost of the Argus® II Retinal Prosthesis System. And the company reported the American Medical Association (AMA) Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) Editorial Panel approved two new Category III CPT codes for initial programming and subsequent reprogramming of the Argus II.
- Enhanced Medical Services (EMS) has purchased Vision Systems, Inc. (VSI) to reportedly become the largest reseller of ophthalmic equipment in the U.S.
- Mobile medical technology provider HealthTronics, Inc. has acquired HealthTech Solutions, Inc., which delivers, sets up and monitors laser and surgical technologies for a variety of medical markets, including ophthalmology and optometry.
- America's Best Contacts & Eyeglasses is one of a number of retailers teaming up to support Boys & Girls Clubs of America during the holiday season. When customers purchase a select eye care accessory kit, $2 from the purchase will be donated to the nonprofit. And America's Best plans to donate $5 for each SHAQ frame sold through the end of the year.
- IN10DID, Inc. — a start-up company located in Tampa — has reportedly developed a one-handed mobile keyboard designed for touch-typing on mobile devices for those with low vision.
- A recent study has found workers in highly stressful jobs with little control over what they did died at a younger age than those with more control.
- Hate wearing glasses to watch 3D videos? Now you soon won't have to thanks to scientists at Seoul National University who have developed a method of bring eyewear-free 3D capabilities to the small screen.
- One of the latest entries into the smartglasses market is ORBI Prime — reportedly the first 360° video recording eyewear. Designed by ORBI Inc., the glasses featuring video-stitching and editing software, 90 minutes of recording time, are waterproof and come with built-in WiFi.
- And ever wish you could be someone else? Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have reportedly developed a pair of glasses that prevent facial recognition systems from recognizing who they are, and in some cases even made the system think the person was someone else.