Alex Young , 2025-05-02 21:15:00
Key takeaways:
- Patient pay procedures are likely to be impacted by a volatile economic climate.
- Innovative, in-demand technology could insulate ophthalmic segments from an unpredictable market.
PARK CITY, Utah — Segments that include patient pay or elective procedures are likely to be impacted by a volatile economic market, according to a speaker at Eyecelerator.
Kirsten Harmon Ingenito, MBA, CEO of Market Scope, gave an update on the ophthalmic market. She discussed the way financial markets have responded to recent government policy changes. While the overall ophthalmic market was worth $48.8 billion in 2024, and there is potential that some segments could see growth in the future, Ingenito said some parts of ophthalmology could struggle in an uncertain economy.
Image: Alex Young
“The two specific segments I want to look at are refractive surgery and IOLs because there is the patient pay or elective component,” she said. “These are the ones that are most likely to be affected by a volatile economic climate.”
Ingenito said two major uncertain market climates also had an impact on refractive surgery: the 2008 recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. She explained that the demand for refractive surgery first started to see a decline late in 2007 before taking a big hit in 2008. There was not much recovery in the refractive market until about 2017, and it was impacted shortly afterward by the COVID-19 shutdowns.
“The years that we were up above average were marked by economic optimism, a booming housing market and low unemployment,” she said. “These are all things that affect that 18-to-40-year-old demographic pretty significantly.”
For presbyopia-correcting IOLs, Ingenito said she did not observe the same decline noted in refractive surgery. Patients in this segment could be more insulated from economic volatility, she said, and new products also came to market right at the time of the economic downturn, like ReSTOR (Alcon) and Tecnis (Jonson & Johnson) before the 2008 recession as well as PanOptix (Alcon) and Vivity (Alcon) before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What that tells me is, although we’re going down a little bit in terms of [presbyopia-correcting] penetration, the other types of models going in are gaining some momentum,” Ingenito said. “This market has a lot of pull from the technology that’s being introduced, which gives me a lot of optimism with all of you here talking about your new technology and what that can do for the market.”
Sources/Disclosures
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Ingenito KH. Ophthalmic market view: The times they are a-changin’. Presented at: Eyecelerator; May 2, 2025; Park City, Utah.
Disclosures:
Ingenito reports being CEO of Market Scope.
