Meet the speaker: Dr Kate Gifford

The SILMO Academy by IOA will be taking place 12 April - 14 April in Singapore. Dr Kate Gifford will be talking about Myopia Management: the opportunity and the imperative.

Myopia management has been declared as standard of care for children with myopia, which requires the optometrist to discuss risk factors, review regularly and take active steps to prescribe treatments which slow myopia progression. The past handful of years has seen enormous growth in the research support and industry innovations for myopia control treatment. In this lecture, an overview of the clinical imperative for myopia management will be provided, translating the science into guidelines for patient care. Then, steps to take in setting up practice systems and training the team will be detailed, along with resources to support marketing and communication with parents and patients.

Dr Kate Gifford is an internationally renowned clinician-scientist optometrist and peer educator, and a Visiting Research Fellow at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She holds a PhD in contact lens optics in myopia, four professional fellowships, over 90 peer reviewed and professional publications, and has presented more than 200 conference lectures. Kate is the Chair of the Clinical Management Guidelines Committee of the International Myopia Institute and lead author on the landmark 2019 paper and 2021 Digest by that committee. In 2016 Kate and her optometrist husband Dr Paul Gifford co-founded Myopia Profile, the world-leading educational platform on childhood myopia management. After running her paediatric, contact lens and myopia specialty practice in the Brisbane CBD for 13 years, Kate moved full time into peer education through Myopia Profile in 2020.

Find out more about SILMO Academy by IOA here.