Canada's Homegrown Goodness: The MyDryEye Team

By MyDryEye.ca

MyDryEye.ca and the Canadian Dry Eye Summit are owning the dry eye space - but this didn’t happen overnight. The start of MyDryEye.ca started with a simple lunch conversation over 5 years ago between Dr. Trevor Miranda and Dr. Jeff Goodhew. The two wanted to promote dry eye awareness to patients and to create a connected network of dry eye optometrists. “Our goal was to have the public recognize dry eye as a disease and to have dry eye practitioners raise their level of expertise while creating a strong practice builder with treatments” Dr. Miranda says. Dr. Miranda, the savvy financial wiz, had already reserved the rights to MyDryEye.ca and wanted to put it into action. Dr. Goodhew, MyDryEye tech guru, immediately created and refined the website to what it is today. Over a few years, MyDryEye. ca has been utilized to promote the current understanding of dry eye to patients, however Dr. Miranda and Dr. Goodhew wanted to extend this awareness to their optometry colleagues. In order to expand the breadth of dry eye education to fellow optometrists, they partnered with Dr. Richard Maharaj who brought years of experience as a clinical educator and scientific writer to help create and chair the annual Canadian Dry Eye Summit (CDES) in 2018. “The collective optometric brain power in Canada is rich, and my goal was to bring forward new voices while changing traditional CE to match the pace of innovation and most importantly, keeping it fun,” Dr. Maharaj notes. Each year he brought in leading dry eye experts from North America and live dry eye technology demonstrations. With each successful CDES, there was a ripple effect of growing dry eye interest from coast to coast in Canada and in the United States. The most exciting aspect was to watch the skill level and confidence of those who attended the summits ramp up to new levels.

Behind the scenes of each successful conference was Ronni Brown, the team’s administrative and event planner. She was brought on by the team to help organize the conferences and liaise with a growing number of industry partners.

The MyDryEye.ca team also created an online learning platform exclusively for dry eye care and practice management (Learn.MyDryEye.ca). The online platform hosts COPE approved lectures, staff training videos, how-to videos on treatments, technology reviews and an online forum to discuss clinical cases and practice management questions. Now, eye care providers from all over the world can learn dry eye at their own pace from a trusted source.

With the dry eye subspecialty in optometry blooming, the MyDryEye team recruited Dr. Diana Nguyen as the public education lead to increase dry eye awareness through social outreach. She created MyDryEye Space, which is an educational patient-facing community for dry eye sufferers. “MyDryEye Space creates the opportunity for dry eye sufferers to learn more about dry eye disease from a reliable source and to connect with dry eye experts”, stated by Dr. Nguyen. She curates digital infographics, writes patient-facing blogs and manages the large social media following on Instagram and Facebook.

At last, dry eye awareness for patients and the latest in dry eye education for optometrists was successfully moving the needle forward in the availability and scope of ocular surface care. Dry eye patients have a reliable source of education with patient-facing content, and are accessing the dry eye doctor locator on MyDryEye.ca to find knowledgeable dry eye optometrists across North America. The doctor locator has unique features that allows patients to find optometrists by location and treatments or procedures offered by each clinic. COVID-19 forced a halt to all live education programs, and CDES was not immune. The team had to replan, and strategize to shift the CDES into a virtual conference. Drs. Maharaj, Goodhew and

Nguyen decided to host the CDES live from Toronto in a small studio, with attendees able to attend from the comfort of their own home. Even with COVID-19 restrictions, Dr. Miranda couldn’t help but make a guest appearance as “Trevor on a Stick”. With approximately 325 attendees, the virtual CDES was a success and optometrists were eager for more dry eye knowledge after each lecture. Optometrists were engaged the entire time with the chat function, polling and live Q&A. In a survey of attendees post event, 97.5% said they would recommend CDES to a fellow colleague and 99% of attendees stated they would attend next year’s CDES! Fast forward to the present day and the team is ecstatic to be back live hosting the CDES on November 13th-14th, 2021 with a hybrid mix of live and virtual learning options. Optometrists will have a live trade show and hands-on workshops with vendors and the virtual version will be mirroring the live event with lectures and live demonstrations. Another addition to the CDES will be a 2 hour virtual event, the Dry Eye Innovation Summit (DEIS) on November 12th. This exciting event will focus on providing the latest in leading dry eye technology and new product pipelines.

Dry eye awareness has become a hot topic with the public and within the eye care industry at large. Each CDES broke barriers for dry eye learning and many optometrists post-CDES have added dry eye clinics and aesthetic services to compliment this growing area of eye care. Patients have also found an educational and supportive community, MyDryEye Space, where they can learn about dry eye and most importantly, locate optometrists who have dry eye programs for them. The MyDryEye team will continue to help dry eye sufferers find a dry eye doctor, push the boundaries of dry eye learning and grow the profession as a whole.

Learn More:

Canadian Dry Eye Summit 2021 Learn.MyDryEye.ca MyDryEye.ca

Connect with the MDE Team:

Richard Maharaj Diana Nguyen Trevor Miranda Jeff Goodhew MyDryEye Space Facebook Group (Patients Only)