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IACLE strives to improve quality of contact lens education
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The International Association of Contact Lens Educators, or IACLE, announced that members of the organization reached nearly 20,000 students in 560 academic institutions around the world in 2017.
New resources, programs and events were added to IACLE’s platform to improve the quality of contact lens education as well as increase the amount of contact lens practitioners worldwide, the group said in a press release.
IACLE had 782 active members in 71 countries at the end of 2017, which was up from 731 in 2016. Additionally, 47% of active members were from IACLE’s Global Priority Countries, including China, India, Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil and Russia.
IACLE also reported that more than 2,200 contact lens educators from 91 countries have had access to resources and training provided by the organization since 1990.
According to the release, 84 of the 154 candidates that sat for the 2017 fellowship exam were successful and, IACLE said there were 328 active fellows of IACLE, globally, as of February 2018.
IACLE also implemented key initiatives in 2017 along with holding major events for contact lens educators. In September 2017, IACLE held its Congress on Contact Lens Education in Hyderabad, India. The group also introduced a new resource, Research Update, in January 2017, which is updated monthly, and released a weekly radio broadcast — IACLE in the World — via Franja Visual Radio in Latin America.
In 2017, ICALE’s global contact lens programs were supported by platinum sponsor Alcon, silver sponsors CooperVision and Johnson & Johnson, and donor sponsor Euclid Systems. Bausch + Lomb became a bronze level IACLE sponsor in the last quarter of 2017.