International Technology Rollout Lessons

Following a successful pilot program, Specsavers is rolling out advanced dry eye treatment across its stores in Australia and New Zealand. In this article, Dr Ben Ashby shares learnings and insights from the rollout that he hopes will support other practices as they refine their own approach to dry eye management and, ultimately, improve outcomes for more patients.

WRITER Dr Ben Ashby

Dry eye disease remains one of the most common and underestimated eye conditions faced in optometric practice. While not sightthreatening, its impact on daily life can be anything but minor. Persistent discomfort, fluctuating vision, and ocular fatigue affect how people work, read, drive, and engage with the world around them. Over time, these symptoms can quietly erode confidence and wellbeing, leaving patients frustrated that something so persistent can feel so difficult to resolve.

The prevalence of dry eye disease continues to rise thanks to ageing populations, increased screen use, more time spent indoors, systemic disease, medications, and environmental factors. Yet despite its frequency, dry eye disease has historically been managed conservatively, with treatment approaches often focused on shortterm symptom relief rather than addressing the underlying pathology driving the condition.

Over the past few years, this landscape has begun to change. As our understanding of dry eye disease has deepened and as technologies capable of treating the root contributors have become more available, the role of optometry has evolved. Increasingly, optometrists are moving beyond palliative management and toward solutions that aim to deliver lasting improvement rather than temporary comfort.

At Specsavers, our purpose is simple: to change lives through better sight. While this has long been associated with refractive care and the detection of eye conditions, it also extends to how people feel about their vision and their eyes every day. Our decision to invest in advanced dry eye treatment has been driven by the belief that everyone deserves access to the best possible eye care and that no one should have to cope with eye discomfort that could be easily treated.

What began as a carefully controlled pilot has now expanded into a broader service offering across our Australian and New Zealand network, with 123 Specsavers practices providing intense pulsed light (IPL) and/ or low-level light therapy (LLLT) treatments at the time of writing, and further rollouts planned in the months ahead. Alongside this growth, we have gathered a wealth of clinical data, patient, and clinician feedback, all of which is shaping both how these treatments are delivered, and how their impact is experienced.

WHY MOVE TO COMBINATION TARGETED TREATMENT

All optometrists know dry eye disease is complex and multifactorial. While aqueous deficient dry eye remains an important clinical subset, evaporative dry eye with meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) accounts for most cases seen in practice. Traditional management strategies, such as lubricants, lid hygiene, and lifestyle modification, continue to play a valuable role, but they are often limited by compliance challenges and variable longterm effectiveness for patients.

Lightbased treatments offer a fundamentally different approach, and introducing both IPL and LLLT into practice together is inclusive and aligned with the internationally recognised DEWS III guidelines for dry eye disease management.1 This sees a shift in how dry eye disease is approached – moving away from the stepwise framework of DEWS II toward evidence-based interventions guided by the underlying disease drivers.

IPL is effective in improving meibomian gland function by reducing periglandular inflammation, addressing abnormal vasculature, and supporting improved lipid secretion. LLLT, meanwhile, provides a gentler, regenerative modality that can be used either independently or in combination with IPL, particularly for patients with mixed dry eye profiles or those for whom IPL is unsuitable.

One of the advantages of offering both IPL and LLLT is the ability to tailor treatment to individual patient needs. In practice, this often means using IPL to address inflammatory and vascular components of MGD, followed by LLLT to support gland recovery and longerterm tear film stability. For patients who are not suitable candidates for IPL, LLLT provides an alternative pathway that still delivers meaningful benefit.

This flexibility has been particularly valuable as the service has expanded. Rather than applying a onesizefitsall approach, optometrists design care plans that reflect each patient’s presentation, preferences, and response to treatment. Over time, this has helped embed advanced dry eye management as a core component of clinical care, rather than a niche offering.

SCALING ADVANCED SERVICES

Rolling out IPL and LLLT across Specsavers practices in Australia and New Zealand has required a specialised support team focused on careful planning, technical equipment roll out, structured clinician education, and ongoing evaluation.

From the outset, the ambition has been to embed these treatments within Specsavers’ robust clinical framework rather than positioning them as standalone procedures. To enable this, the team spent a lot of time working with optometrists and patient representatives to integrate both conversations about the treatment and IPL/LLLT itself into our patient journey so that it would be utilised in a way that didn’t interrupt clinic flow.

This has meant establishing clear diagnostic pathways to ensure appropriate patient selection, maintaining consistent clinical protocols for treatment recommendations and review, providing ongoing support for optometrists and practice teams, and collecting data to monitor outcomes as well as patient and clinician experience.

For any practice looking to make advanced dry eye treatment available, we recommend spending significant time planning and monitoring these aspects as they can make all the difference for your optometrists and their patients.

MEASURING CLINICAL RESULTS

Our optometrists consistently use the symptom assessment in dry eye (SANDE) score system to determine the success of each treatment from the patient’s perspective. This means that at each advanced dry eye treatment appointment, the optometrist asks their patients about the frequency and severity of their symptoms on that date. The patients give an answer from zero to five, with five being very frequent and the worst severity. This data is captured in our patient management system and at support office, enabling Specsavers to monitor trends in real time.

When we compare the average SANDE scores at appointment one vs appointment four, there is an obvious change in symptom frequency and severity, showing that the treatment is making a difference for the patients. The mean improvement changes 1.7 points for frequency of dry eye symptoms and 1.6 points for severity of symptoms – this is captured even before the patient experiences the impact of their fourth treatment. These outcomes reinforce the role of lightbased treatments as effective options for appropriately selected patients.

ANALYSING PATIENT EXPERIENCES

Beyond clinical metrics, patient experience is also monitored as a powerful indicator of success. Feedback collected through InMoment, the customer experience intelligence company we use to capture and monitor customer feedback, shows that patients receiving IPL and LLLT give their experience a net promoter score (NPS) of 79.2. This consistently strong NPS suggests that patients undergoing IPL and LLLT feel not only relief from dry eye symptoms, but also a higher level of satisfaction with their overall care journey. While NPS is not a clinical measure, it provides useful insight into how patients perceive the care they receive and how our advanced dry eye services are influencing that perception.

We also analyse freetext patient feedback to understand the impact of advanced dry eye treatment on patients and to see if there are opportunities for improvement as we roll out the offering. This has revealed several recurring themes, which also help explain the positive response our patients have had to date.

Firstly, and least surprisingly, many patients describe the relief they experience as being different in nature from that achieved with drops alone. Rather than shortterm comfort, they report a gradual but noticeable improvement in daytoday eye comfort, often accompanied by more stable vision and reduced irritation as the day progresses. This sense of sustained improvement appears to be particularly meaningful for patients who have lived with symptoms for years.

The treatment experience itself also features strongly in feedback. Patients frequently comment on how straightforward and comfortable the procedures are, noting that IPL and LLLT are far less intimidating than they initially expected. For some, the inpractice nature of the treatment, and that it is delivered by a clinician they already trust, adds to their confidence and reassurance.

Finally, patients report that they value the explanation and education that accompanies advanced dry eye treatment. Many report that, for the first time, they feel they understand the underlying cause of their symptoms and the rationale behind their treatment plan. This improved understanding appears to support engagement and adherence, reinforcing the importance of clear communication alongside clinical intervention.

PROFESSIONAL SATISFACTION AND SCOPE OF PRACTICE

While patient outcomes remain the primary focus, the impact on optometrists should not be underestimated and is also captured and monitored by our team.

Clinicians involved in the rollout consistently describe the professional satisfaction that comes with effectively managing a condition that is both common and lifealtering, yet historically difficult to treat.

Expanding the scope of inpractice services enables optometrists to play a more active role in managing chronic ocular surface disease. In doing so, it supports professional development and reinforces optometry’s position as a central player in longterm eye health care.

With this in mind, it wasn’t surprising to us that the opportunity to utilise IPL and LLLT to improve the lives of patients came up as one of the reasons why our optometrists said Specsavers is a great place to work in our recent workplace survey results.

LOOKING AHEAD

The continued expansion of IPL and LLLT services across our ANZ network reflects both clinical confidence and patient demand. As the service grows, ongoing data collection and evaluation will remain essential to ensure safety, consistency, and effectiveness.

Dry eye disease is unlikely to become less prevalent in the short-term future. However, with advances in diagnostic understanding, treatment options, and availability, optometry is exceptionally well positioned to treat those who experience it.

When advanced therapies are integrated thoughtfully, with purpose and patient experience at the centre, they have the potential to change not just symptoms but lives.

And that is what continues to drive us.

Dr Ben Ashby BOptom Hons PGCertOcTher PhD is the Clinical Services Director, Specsavers ANZ. He is a conjoint lecturer at Deakin University, an adjunct lecturer at The University of New South Wales, and an Honorary Teaching Fellow at The University of Auckland.

Reference
1. Perez VL, Chen W, Sullivan DA, et al. TFOS DEWS III: Executive Summary. Am J Ophthalmol. 2026 Feb;282:135-145. doi: 10.1016/j.ajo.2025.09.035.