Moorfields Eye Hospital, London ~ Cornea Day, Sat 12 Oct 2013

[littlemermaid]

Cornea Day - Saturday 12th October 2013 ~ 10.00am to 3.00pm
National Institute for Health Research at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology
Doors open from 9.45am. Etc Venues - CBI Conference Centre, Centre Point Tower, 103 New Oxford Street, London, WC1A 1DU

'The first Cornea day aims to:

- bring patients and professionals together
- enable all cornea patients, friends and family to share their experiences
- enable patients to influence corneal eye disease care, research and education
- outline the latest exciting developments in corneal eye disease care

Through a range of interactive events, patients and professionals will be able to share views about corneal eye disease and research. At the event we will hold sessions on Acanthamoeba Keratitis, Keratoconus, Neovascularisation and Fuchs Dystrophy. If you would like sessions on other conditions please let us know, we cannot guarantee availability of sessions but will try our best to accommodate requests. "Our aim is for the patient to be at the heart of our research and involved in the design, conduct and evaluation of our projects."'

http://www.brcophthalmology.org/CorneaDay/ Wonderful!

[Rebecca Petris]

That's awesome LM!!! Thanks for posting it. Love to hear how it goes! I hope there's a terrific turnout from patients!!

[Pinklady]

This looks like a fantastic idea.

[nadz]

Thanks LM for letting us know about this. Is anyone else from the dry eye zone community going along tomorrow? Me & my hubbie will be there and it would be great to meet up.

Will post some info about the event afterwards.

[littlemermaid]

Yes, we're going too.

[RFREITAS]

Hello!

How was it?

[nadz]

The Cornea Day proved to be a very interesting event despite the fact that very little was related specifically to occular surface disease or dry eye.

The objectives were to outline the latest developments in corneal eye research and there were presentations about stem cell research and gene therapy advancements. Both areas do seem to be promising and there is a sense that we are at the threshold of treating eye conditions through the use of stem cells or DNA/proteins to grow new healthy corneas/or counteract the effects of missing proteins or malfunctioning genes.

Please excuse the brief summary because whilst it was easy to follow the content listening to experts at the time I'm afraid I can't even do justice to the topics trying to relate them back to you.

But one analogy has stuck in my head and that was about the advances in mobile phone technology. One of the presenters said that whenever he thinks they're not making sufficient progress with research he thinks about how quickly smart phone technology took off once it was established. He asked the audience 'who would have thought even a few years ago that we'd be using our phones as mini computers, music players etc rather than just as a phone?' And he used this analogy to give a message of hope that there will be some great advances in treatments for eye conditions in the next few years.

This led then to an interesting talk about the nature of research, what is involved and how rigorous processes must be. There was an acknowledgement that patients hadn't been involved as much as they could have been to influence eye disease research, care and education. This is a situation that the Moorfields researchers and UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) wish to address.

We had travelled down to London from the Midlands for this event and I'm glad we went. Anything we can do to get DEZ higher on research and treatment agendas is well worth it.

[RFREITAS]

Perfect! Nice to read!
I was thinking about that analogy other day Let's have faith!

Thank you for your feedback!

[NotADryEye]

Agreed. Patients seem to be out of the loop in everything, from research to the Dry Eye Workshop and the Dry Eye Questionnaire.