A new dry eye disease resource for patients is being launched in New Zealand with a public event aimed at the region’s dry eye patients on Saturday 13 April at the University of Auckland.
The Dry Eye Association website contains links to patient-friendly information about dry eye and its management, tips for treatments, such as lid hygiene and warm compresses, and links to dedicated, local patient groups on Facebook and Instagram. Based on and supported by the Dry Eye Foundation in the US, it was developed and originally unveiled in November last year in the UK by Professor James Wolffsohn and his team at the School of Optometry at Aston University, Birmingham.
“It’s about peer support,” said Prof Wolffsohn who’s currently based at the University of Auckland as part of the Hood Fellowships programme. The website will help patients to remember the advice and tips they’ve been given by their eyecare practitioner, while the social media aspect, run by patients for patients, provides an opportunity for them to connect and share what works and what doesn’t, for example, he said. The dry-eye-association.com website includes a central common area and tabs for country-specific research and social media resources.
