This session explores the important connection between sensory health, healthy ageing and overall wellbeing. Vision, hearing and cognitive health all play a key role in how people communicate, function in daily life, and maintain independence.

Mirjam van Tilborg will highlight why eye care and hearing care shouldn’t be viewed as separate fields, especially when supporting an ageing population. The session will focus on how opticians, audiologists and optometrists can recognise early signals, ask targeted questions and look beyond the first complaint a patient presents with.

You’ll be encouraged to reflect on your own role in connecting eye care and hearing care, and how small moments of awareness in daily practice can contribute to more person-centred care and proactive support for healthy ageing.

Inspired by the classic “Diagnostiek & Plan” teaching approach, this session focuses on structured clinical reasoning to support safe and well-reasoned decision-making across both live and tele-optometry. The session will use real-life case studies from primary eye care.

You’ll be guided through complex clinical cases step by step, starting with observations and findings, followed by building a differential diagnosis and deciding on the most appropriate next step.

Throughout the session, you’re actively involved in discussing possibilities, prioritising differential diagnoses, and reflecting on clinical reasoning.

In primary eye care, as an optician you’re the first link in the chain – and your observations can make the difference. Many serious eye conditions don’t start with dramatic symptoms, but with subtle first signals you notice in conversation, behaviour, vision complaints, or basic findings.

In this case-based session, you’ll learn how to separate normal, common complaints from not-to-miss red flags, and we’ll walk through practical examples from the store.

Identifying hearing loss in a child has a major impact on parents, who often have many questions and need time to process the news. Early care and support are essential, and this session demonstrates how early identification and multidisciplinary cooperation support both the child’s development as well as the family.

The session walks you through the full care pathway – from diagnosis to school age – with a focus on close collaboration between professionals such as audiology centres, ENT specialists, family support services, and hearing-aid specialists. Key topics include screening, diagnostics, medical assessment, causes, family guidance, and hearing rehabilitation.

You’ll also learn how hearing aid trials in young children differ from those in adults, and how each stakeholder plays a role in achieving the best possible outcome.

Cataract assessment is rarely just about lens opacity. Patients may have good visual acuity but significant complaints, or clear findings with limited impact on daily life. Using real-life case studies, this session explores when referral is appropriate, when monitoring is sufficient and how to involve the patient in shared decision making.

The session focuses on aligning clinical findings, functional complaints and patient expectations, while clearly explaining risks, benefits and timing of surgery. It supports optometrists in making confident, well-reasoned decisions in one of the most common areas of primary eye care.

This highly interactive workshop focuses on how to handle customer complaints using real-life cases from optical practice. In small groups, you’ll analyse common complaint scenarios and decide on the best approach together.

Through guided case discussions, you’ll practise to listen, ask the right questions, and respond with clarity and empathy. The session explores how to distinguish between technical issues, adaptation challenges and unmet expectations, and how to confidently explain solutions to customers.

Join this session to feel more confident in supporting clients with tinnitus, as you’ll learn about adaptability and seven behavior patterns in people with tinnitus – and how to respond to them.

Most people can adapt to tinnitus, but some struggle and feel helpless. Instead of trying to “fix” tinnitus, this session focuses on reducing this feeling of helplessness. You’ll learn how to recognise different behavior patterns (such as worry or denial) and better understand how to respond.

The session isn’t only about the patient; it’s mainly about helping you support your patients more effectively.

Primary eye care often involves uncertainty – either with early findings or conflicting clinical information.

Using real-life case studies, this session explores how to make safe clinical decisions when certainty is limited. You’ll learn how to balance monitoring versus intervention, and how to involve patients in decision-making without creating doubt.

The session reflects the international focus on decision-making under uncertainty and supports high quality, patient-centred primary eye care.

This interactive session focuses on common contact lens complaints using real-life case studies, supporting you in recognising, questioning and solving contact lens issues.

The session explores how to distinguish between normal adaptation, handling issues, hygiene problems, and signs that require further assessment. You’ll work in small groups to analyse situations, ask the right follow-up questions, and decide on the most appropriate next step.

This session is organised by CooperVision.

This session focuses on the impact of acoustic coupling on hearing aid fitting. It covers how to use Real Ear Measurements (REM) as a validation tool and how to correctly interpret the results.

You’ll learn about the visible effects of different fittings, such as domes, tubes, receivers, and custom earmolds, on the final outcome for the client. The session also addresses occlusion, the influence of the ear canal on hearing thresholds, and how this affects measurements and target curves.

Join us for this technical session, which is designed to directly strengthen audiologists’ knowledge and practical skills.

AI is rapidly transforming how we live, work, and deliver care. In this inspiring session, Richard van Hooijdonk explores what the future of AI could look like across healthcare and the health-retail sector.

The session highlights the opportunities, challenges and impact of AI on patient care, customer experience, diagnostics and daily practice – and what this might mean for us.