Essilor

Essilor awarded a Silmo d’Or for Eyezen™, its lenses for a connected life at Paris World Optical Show

At the SILMO World Optical Show in Paris (25 to 28 September), Essilor received a gold award -Silmo d’Or- for Eyezen™, a new lens category meeting new visual needs linked to increased digital screen use.

«Innovation in ophthalmic optics is more crucial than ever: Behaviours are changing rapidly and prevention must be at the heart of visual health. Our latest innovation, the Eyezen™ range, illustrates our commitment to keep offering innovative solutions to answer visual correction and prevention needs for consumers across the world» explains Jean Carrier, Chief Operating Officer at Essilor International.

Eyezen™, dedicated lenses for connected lives To address emerging vision issues linked to connected lives and prevent risks for the eyes, the Essilor Group has created the Eyezen™ range, featuring 2 new technologies: Eyezen™ Focus and Light Scan®. Today, more than a 1.5 billion people in the world use a smartphone daily and 9 out of 10 people declare spending more time on digital screens than 2 years ago.

Increasing use of tablets and smartphones has significantly altered our reading habits, with 70% of people reporting an impact on vision – particularly visual fatigue-, and posture – neck and shoulder pain-. In addition, our eyes are exposed to the harmful effects of some blue-violet light rays that can be emitted by digital screens.

Thanks to Eyezen™ Focus, vision correction is specifically adapted to new reading distances corresponding to each digital tool, including the « ultra near » vision: the average reading distance for a smartphone is 33 cm, against 42 cm for a book. Eyezen™ lenses provide a new solution to ease eye accommodation, especially when switching from one type of a screen to another. Combined with Crizal® Prevencia® and LightScan® -the selective blue light filtering technology-, Eyezen™ lenses also protect the eyes from the harmful effects of some blue-violet light rays.

Essilor innovates to understand and answer consumers’ new visual needs Carefully exploring rapidly changing behaviours and market needs, the Essilor Group invests 180 million euros per year in Research and Innovation. The Group’s 550 researchers worldwide are continually striving to conceive and develop innovative solutions in line with Essilor’s mission: improving lives by improving sight. Eyezen™ lenses are available for every corrections (myopia, hypermétropia, …) but also for all those who do not need correction but wish to support their vision and protect their eyes.

Specific visual needs resulting to digital screen usage studied by Essilor R&D Essilor carried out 2 studies: one with Ipsos, with 4000 people worldwide (across China, Brasil, France and the US) led to understanding and measuring the impact on sight of new digital screen related behaviours. This study demonstrated that 3 people out of 4 complain of eye fatigue and 2 people out of 3, of neck and shoulder pain.

Essilor’s R&D teams also conducted a specific study to measure various reading postures when using digital tools. It revealed the usefulness of a new reading distance in the lens, the “ultra-near” vision zone, linked to the use of smartphone. The appearance of major changes in postures and the increased reading on digital tools generated new reading postures with higher eye declination and significant head declination. In addition, 95% of people have a reading distance of 23 cm to 43 cm when using their smartphone – and 39 cm for their tablet- whereas the average reading distance for a book is 42 cm. In 2015, the Essilor Group was listed by Forbes magazine among the World Top 100 Most Innovative Companies for the 5th consecutive year. A pioneer in ophthalmic optics, Essilor is at the origin of major innovations such as progressive lenses, organic lenses and photochromic organic lenses.

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