Personalized lenses based on a patient’s vertex, pantoscopic tilt and frame wrap measurements are increasingly popular. Patients like them because the design of a personalized lens is based on the position of wear, which enables them to get the lens’ full optical performance.

But lens personalization can be complicated, as many dispensers and labs will attest. When compensated prescriptions based on position of wear first came out, it confused many doctors and dispensers who weren’t able to verify the lenses made by their lab. Although that problem has lessened as personalized lenses become more familiar, dispensers face other problems.

As Kyle Kravick, ABOC, retail manager at SSM Health Davis Duehr Dean in Portage, Wis., explains, “When a first-time customer comes in for an eye exam with a pair of glasses that has a compensated Rx, the optical technician will neutralize the glasses, and that will give you a starting point. It is not the Rx that was written, it is the Rx as worn. Does the tech take frame wrap, vertex distance and measure panto? Do they do the math to find out what their written Rx was? Call the last place they went to? What if that customer is coming to you because they cannot see out of the glasses they got somewhere else or can’t see out of the glasses you sold them? Some places give out a card that has their compensated Rx on it. Great idea, but they get lost or tossed. These issues will only get worse.”

Kravick makes a good point. At minimum, dispensers need a way to identify lenses that are made from a compensated Rx. This issue has been raised by others, and The Vision Council’s lens marking committee is looking into possible solutions.

Kravick’s solution is to have labs use standardized lens markings that include vertex distance, frame wrap and panto measurements (VWP). Dispensers would neutralize the new patient’s glasses and enter those measurements along with the VWP, into a compensated Rx calculator supplied by the lab either online or via an app. As Kravick says, “No cards, no calling, no unnecessary remakes, no issues.”

What do you think? I’d like to hear your ideas.

• Andrew Karp
Group Editor, Lenses and Technology
[email protected]