While the contact lens industry currently is experiencing a flat growth period, Bausch & Lomb’s corporate vice president says specialty lenses and new technology will create new lens wearers as we approach the next millennium.

Alan Dozier, corporate vice president and president of B&L’s North American Vision Care Business, touched on these and other topics during his State of the Contact Lens Industry Address at the Contact Lens Association of Ophthalmologists (CLAO) meeting in January.

Here we’ll review his thoughts on the state of the industry, as well as what he believes the future holds.

The bottom line for patients is convenience, Dozier says, which is why many in the industry believed that 1-day disposables would be a sure-fire hit immediately. Not so.

Dozier says while 1-day disposables provide safe wear as well as the convenience of no care and cleaning, they haven’t taken off in the United States as they have in Europe.

"The 1-day patients have really hovered around a total of 600,000 over the last 5, 6, 7 quarters," Dozier says. "So we have a market now, a 1-day market, a daily throw-away market, of 500,000 or 600,000 patients – essentially flat."

One reason for the flat market: price. Dozier says that for now, the lenses are too expensive for many patients. He says the future depends largely on manufacturers cutting prices.

Significant advances in lens care – the ease and convenience of a one-bottle chemical solution that does everything – also reduce the 1-day market. Dozier says the growth in one-bottle solutions has been dramatic, registering 12%, 15%, 18% per year.

"We do not see 1-day capturing 10%, 12%, up to 15% of this market, which is a view, quite frankly, a number of us had 2, 3, 4 years back," Dozier says.

The daily disposable news isn’t all flat. Dozier says that over the past year the convenience and affordability of disposable lenses for the astigmatic and presbyopic patient has grown the market considerably.

The introduction of disposable presbyopic lenses is especially important.

"For the first time, patients can affordably wear soft bifocal contact lenses in a way that meets their lifestyle needs, whether it’s full-time wear or occasional wear," Dozier says.

The potential for these specialty lenses to boost your practice is great. Dozier says that there are almost 20 million vision-corrected astigmatic patients in the United States, and only 5 million are in contact lenses.

The big news for the next century, Dozier says, is in the area of continuous wear, as many patients look for an alternative to refractive surgery.

"Continuous wear technology offers the promise of very safe contact lens wear while addressing head-on patients’ demands for convenience," Dozier says. "In fact, continuous wear technology has the potential to revolutionize contact lens wearing well into the next millennium."

He expects continuous wear lenses to be approved by the FDA for 7-day extended wear in "the very near term," and says that the okay for 30-day wear could come in the next few years.

"The process of getting the 30-day approval will be based on very strong partnering between the industry and you, the practitioner, and quite frankly, the FDA," Dozier says.

Your job as an Eye M.D., Dozier says, is to give patients strong guidance, reassurance and support. That will be critical to the success of continuous wear, he says.

One important aspect of future success is a closer relationship between doctors and manufacturers. Dozier says B&L and other companies are refocusing their efforts in this area.

"The practitioner will be central to this growth, partnering with manufacturers and the patient to provide high quality, cost-effective care to the patient," he says. "That’s what’s going to drive the health and vitality of this industry."