1:30min
By Rhiannon Riches
Assistant Editor
SuperStream
Optometrists and practice owners running small businesses with fewer than 20 employees must start using SuperStream by 30 June 2016.
The Australian Taxation Office is running free webinars from February to June to help small business owners set up and use SuperStream. Action now will allow plenty of time to check that the new procedures are running smoothly before the SuperStream deadline.
In the past, most employers have had to process employee super contributions in different formats to several funds. With SuperStream, small business owners need to make only one electronic transaction to cover all their employees.
Check webinar times and register.
The ATO has prepared a SuperStream employer step-by-step check-list.
Leadership Week
Leadership Victoria is offering Optometry Australia members a 10 per cent discount on two leadership programs during Adaptive Leadership Week from 29 February to 4 March.
Members can redeem the discount for the Adaptive Leadership Intensive program on 29 February and 1 March, and Your Leadership Edge program, on 4 and 22 March, and 3 May.
Each program is centred on four leadership competencies: manage self, diagnose situation, intervene skilfully, and energise others.
Visit Leadership Victoria for details.
Glaucoma forum at CERA
The Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA) is hosting a Glaucoma community information forum on 3 March.
Led by Professor Jonathan Crowston, managing director and head of glaucoma research unit at CERA, the forum will address three key topics; Visual function tests for glaucoma; Drops: past, present and future; and 24-hour eye pressure and glaucoma.
The forum will take place at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in East Melbourne.
To register, email cera-rsvp@unimelb.edu.au or phone 03 9929 8360.
2050 in our sights
A report on the prevalence of myopia has been published in Ophthalmology.
The report, written by authors primarily from the Brien Holden Vision Institute, is making headline news in mainstream media.
The authors, including the late Professor Brien Holden, conclude that myopia and high myopia estimates from 2000 to 2050 suggest significant increases in prevalence globally, with implications for planning services, including managing and preventing myopia-related ocular complications and vision loss among almost one billion people with high myopia.
Read the open access paper in Ophthalmology.
Read the Myopia special issue of Clinical and Experimental Optometry. Optometry Australia members, register first on the Wiley website for easy, direct access. Login instructions.
Smart contact lenses
Researchers at RMIT University and the University of Adelaide have joined forces to create a stretchable nano-scale device to manipulate light.
According to the researchers, the device manipulates light to such an extent that it can filter specific colours while still being transparent and could be used to make smart contact lenses.
Their work has been published in the science journal ACS Nano and was supported by the Australian Research Council.