Alcon has launched Precision7, a new one-week replacement contact lens, via a roadshow of major cities across Australia and New Zealand.  

The events, built around the number seven in a nod to the lens’ replacement cycle, brought together optometrists to hear from Alcon and two guest speakers advocating for a weekly contact lens and the habits needed to support it.

In Sydney, Helen Gleave, Senior Professional Education and Development Manager at Alcon and an optometrist herself, opened the event by setting out the reasoning behind the launch. She told attendees that while daily disposable lenses remain the first choice for most practitioners, around half of contact lens wearers in Australia are still fitted in a reusable lens, largely on cost grounds. Ms Gleave said Alcon’s research, comprising 23 market studies across 13 countries involving approximately 6,000 patients, alongside 18 clinical studies involving close to 1,200 patients, had shaped the development of Precision7.

SUPPORTING COMPLIANCE

Ms Gleave cited data showing two-week wearers have the lowest replacement compliance of any modality, with about two-thirds overwearing their lenses beyond the recommended cycle, a quarter wearing them for 15 days or more, and roughly one in 10 stretching them close to a month. By contrast, she said, a weekly cycle aligns more naturally with patients’ existing routines, an idea Alcon has built into a “pick your day” message encouraging wearers to tie their lens change to an established weekly habit.

Ms Gleave then outlined the Activ-Flo technology underpinning the lens. Precision7 is made from a silicone hydrogel material, serafilcon A, which has a Dk/t of 149. This offers high oxygen transmissibility and has a moderate modulus for ease of handling. Bound into that material is a permanently embedded moisturising agent to keep the lens surface wettable, a concept she noted is not new to the category. What Alcon has added, she said, is a replenishing agent, released gradually from the core of the lens to its surface from the moment the blister pack is opened, sustaining moisture across all seven days of wear rather than delivering an initial burst that fades. Precision7 comes in sphere and toric designs from launch. In clinical trials, patients rated the lens nine out of 10 for comfort and vision, including on day seven.

CLINICAL EXPERIENCE

Newcastle optometrist Heidi Hunter spoke at the Sydney event about fitting Precision7 in her independent practice, Custom Eyecare, where she had early access to the lens for around six weeks. Ms Hunter, a self-described “optometry super nerd” who generally favours daily disposables, said a seven-day lens option made sense for many patients who prefer reusables and are at risk of dropping out of contact lens wear altogether.

She described two cases fitted with early-access lenses. The first, a 20-year-old patient referred to Ms Hunter a decade earlier for myopia control, was moved from a daily disposable into Precision7 after a conversation about the cost of contact lenses as she began supporting herself financially. After discussion, she settled on a Sunday lens changeover to coincide with her household’s bin night. The second, an existing two-week wearer switched from another manufacturer’s lens, reported on day three that insertion, removal, and vision had all improved compared with her previous lenses. Photographs taken later in the cycle showed markedly less surface deposition. Ms Hunter said daily disposables would remain her default recommendation, but the weekly cycle and its ‘pick your day’ messaging gave her a genuine option for patients who need a reusable lens and struggle to remember a fortnightly schedule.

ESTABLISHING HABITS

The evening’s guest speaker, Dr Gina Cleo, an accredited dietitian, assistant professor at Bond University and director of the Habit Change Institute, spoke on the science of habit formation. She explained that habits form through a cue, routine, and reward loop, and that non-compliance with instructions, such as lens replacement schedules, is rarely an education problem but a habit one. Willpower, she said, is a limited resource depleted by stress, fatigue, and everyday decision making, which is why relying on patients’ self-control to remember a lens change is unlikely to succeed.

Dr Cleo recommended anchoring new habits to small, achievable steps and to existing routines using a “when I [trigger], I will [action]” structure, an approach shown to double the likelihood of success. She noted that fortnightly routines rarely occur naturally in daily life, whereas weekly patterns, such as bin day, offer a ready-made cue for a lens change. This, she said, makes a seven-day contact lens option make perfect sense.