Sponsored by IOT
By Deborah Kotob, ABOM
Most of us never meet the brilliant minds who contribute to the development and advancement of ophthalmic lens design. In a recent interview, Laurie Pierce, ABOM, introduced us to Dr. Eva Chamorro, the director of the Clinical Research Department at IOT, who shares insights into the essential nature of wearer trials in developing ophthalmic lens designs.
Before starting with IOT in 2013, Chamorro was a student and researcher at the University of Madrid. She holds a doctorate and a master’s degree in low vision and research, specializing in optometry. While at IOT, she worked in the Technical Department for her first five years before taking on her current Director of Clinical Research role. Chamorro describes the Clinical Research Department’s objectives as developing and testing new products related to the ophthalmic optics industry, working mainly in the design of new ophthalmic lenses but also in developing tools that help the eyecare professional dispenser get the best results when dispensing IOT lenses. The team’s primary responsibility is to test every product through controlled wearer trials. Through controlled wearer trials, Chamorro and her team capture valuable user feedback that provides subjective data they rely on in developing new and better products.
Since assuming her position as the Director of Clinical Research, she shares the credit for growing the state-of-the-art clinical research facility at IOT of highly qualified optometrists, mathematicians and administrators. Her entire team is dedicated exclusively to wearer trials. Under her leadership, the IOT clinical research department has evolved into a state-of-the-art facility specifically adapted to evaluate the visual performance of lenses relative to individual participants. Chamorro shares that the unique methodology created for the IOT wearer trials continually evolves to ensure maximum control of the process. She credits the facilities’ aberrometry or advanced eye-tracking devices with facilitating a better understanding of the patient’s eye-lens system. This ever-growing body of knowledge and years of experience is invaluable in understanding how the lenses and eyes work together.
Her team primarily conducts wearer trials of new ophthalmic lenses: single vision, progressive lenses, etc. They complete roughly 40 wear trials per year involving around 1,500 patients. When asked why she thinks wearer trials are essential for the ultimate success of the lens design, she states: “For us, the user’s feedback is the most important point to ensure that products meet their needs. Wearer trials allow us to put the user at the center of the design process. We create and adapt our products based on user feedback. Their satisfaction level, experiences, needs and preferences are our insights to design and develop our products. And it provides us the security that every product meets the highest quality standards. The worst trial results still produce very relevant research because the goal is not to launch a product but to understand how the eye behaves with several lenses or with several functions that optimize the lenses. Often, we see surprising results. Sometimes, we get positive results, and the wearer trial confirms our hypothesis. But there are times when we get unexpected results. It is conventional to think that unexpected results are bad results. But for us, it is not. Unexpected results help us advance and improve because we need to understand the reasons, find solutions and solve them. Most of the time, it leads us to create new hypotheses that help us to design and develop better products.” In other words, wearer data from unsuccessful trials is as valuable as from successful ones.
When asked to weigh the importance of wearer trials versus theoretical models, Chamorro weighs them equally, stating, “The theoretical models are essential for developing products. We need them to define the lenses’ characteristics and quantify objective metrics about the behavior of the lenses. On the other hand, wearer trials provide us with subjective information about the real performance of the lens experienced by wearers. But we need both. Theoretical models alone are incomplete because the performance of the lenses has a really subjective component and can only be tested by controlled wearer trials that collect the user’s feedback. Inversely, suppose we only based our development and analysis on wearer trials. In that case, the process will not be effective because we would have to work without a good hypothesis, which could lead to inconclusive results that are difficult to understand.”
A common phrase Chamorro heard while at university was, “The eye is a complex organ.” And she confirms, “It really is. The perception of the eye has a subjective component, and we cannot presuppose anything.”
