Gerd Auffarth is the Director of the David J. Apple International Laboratory of Ocular Pathology and IVCRC as well as Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology, Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Why SIFI has a focus on eye care Our mission always has been and continues to be, the development and marketing of effective and innovative ophthalmic therapies. SIFI was founded in 1935 by two pharmacists who formulated ophthalmic ointments to meet local demand, and this ophthalmic focus continues to this day – we’ve invested in state-of-the-art facilities devoted to ophthalmology, like those we built in 2009 to develop and manufacture advanced IOLs. Our vision now encompasses the evolution of SIFI into an international eye care player, leveraging on our domestic leadership and high-quality product portfolio. SIFI’s vision for the future of the industry Eyecare is experiencing a shift in how research and development is approached: it’s changing from an environment of largely incremental innovations and improvements, to a more disruptive one fueled by higher investments, particularly in the US biotech sector. Ophthalmic companies are now part of the mainstream mergers and acquisitions market, with multi-billion dollars deals being completed each year. We believe the major challenges in the future will be obtaining market access with government reimbursement for those innovative, yet costly technologies. This is a time of shrinking healthcare budgets – especially in Europe – and has necessarily involved restrictions on pricing and volumes. However, new digital technologies may also represent a big opportunity to create significant value for patients and payers to reduce inefficiencies in the provision of eye care across the globe: we will see how fast ophthalmic companies will embrace these opportunities. How SIFI supports surgeons with innovation SIFI works closely with surgeons to satisfy unmet medical needs through innovative technologies and high-level of service that helps surgeons improve patients’ safety and quality of life. As a next step in the development of our IOL technology platform, we will be launching Mini WELL Toric in the second half of this year, thus combining the most advanced IOL presbyopia correcting technology with a novel method of correcting astigmatism.
