My practice as a surgeon who offers premium intraocular lenses is based on evidence and data – evidence from peer-reviewed published papers, and data from my own clinical practice.

Every surgeon reading this article believes themselves to be a competent – if not excellent – surgeon, with a very strong surgical safety record and a large cohort of happy patients. And true, this is probably an accurate assessment. But do you have the data to back up that self-assessment? And do you have the data to help you continuously improve your practice for the benefit of your patients?

Data from my own clinical practice is entered into CLEARlog. It’s not an electronic medical record; it’s a fast and easy to use app, allowing surgeons to rapidly run reports regarding their cataract and refractive lens exchange practice. CLEARlog enables the surgeon to choose between very simple analysis such as posterior rupture rate, or complex analyses with reports that include up to three separate parameters within a single graph. Surgeons can also compare the results of up to three lenses with up to one year of follow-up on the same graph.

I use CLEARlog to regularly check my PCR rate, refractive outcomes, and cumulative post-operative visual acuity at far, intermediate and near distances. This personal data can be shared with patients and referring optometrists, included on my website and social media, and included in benchmarking exercises such as my annual appraisal (an annual obligation in the UK), and for early detection of outlying results.

I also compare the results of different multifocal lens implants on the same graph, looking at their performance for unaided distance, intermediate, and near vision. Additionally, CLEARlog can run analyses for dysphotopsia frequency and severity so that I can inform my patients of real-world rates, and focus my lens choices on those that produce the best results.

CLEARlog allows me to analyse filtered results and generate abstracts for presentation at international conferences. For example, I have seven abstracts accepted for presentation at the ESCRS 2026 annual meeting in London. The data were identified and analysed with just a few clicks of CLEARlog. Further analyses can be performed by downloading a spreadsheet from the surgeon’s account and analysing the data within the spreadsheet or using SPSS.

Published case studies

The value of structured outcome data has been reflected in the peer-reviewed literature. A pilot study at Westmead Hospital in Sydney used CLEARlog to capture refractive, dysphotopsia and spectacle-independence data for a trainee-led multifocal IOL programme (1). They found that a trainee surgeon with no prior multifocal experience could achieve refractive accuracy and patient satisfaction in line with published benchmarks for experienced operators.

A separate time-motion study at the same institution compared prospective auditing against traditional retrospective chart review (2). They found that moving to CLEARlog cut audit time by more than 15 hours per cycle, adding no meaningful burden to individual patient consultations. Together, these studies suggest that the value of a tool like CLEARlog lies not just in individual surgeon insight, but in its capacity to support more efficient, better quality improvement across a department.

A more recent study, published in August 2026, extended this work by comparing an enhanced monofocal IOL and a refractive extended depth of focus IOL against a monofocal control, all implanted by the same trainee surgeon at Westmead Hospital (3). CLEARlog was used to capture and analyse the refractive, visual acuity, and patient-reported outcomes for each lens group. The trainee achieved distance, intermediate, and near vision that were significantly better with both premium lenses than with the standard monofocal IOL, and satisfaction was rated highly across all three groups, with outcomes for the premium lenses comparable to benchmarks reported in the international literature.

The authors of this study credited the app with making it possible to track and compare outcomes for each lens model in real time against the outcomes of the wider centre – a prospective, multi-group audit that would otherwise have been far more labour-intensive to run.