Myopia SOS with Prof Ian Flitcroft - Episode 3 - Screens, simple details and seagulls

Published: September 29th 2025

Myopia SOS! Dr Kate Gifford and Professor Ian Flitcroft are back with advice as your Agony Aunt and Agony Uncle, in part three of this six-part series. Coming from the southern and northern hemispheres are an optometrist and an ophthalmologist, here to help you with your curly clinical cases in myopia management. Send us your struggles using the email address podcast@myopiaprofile.com and we’ll shoulder the agonies for you. 

Clinical communication is arguably the foundation of successful patient management, and both Ian and Kate are keen on providing you tips and tools for this. Discussing the visual environment with patients and parents sit on each of Ian’s steps in myopia management. Kate highlights the good news messages and “small wins” to help parents in managing digital tech use, Ian talks screen time stats and simple details, and they debate the merits of the 20-20 rule. 

And there’s more - Kate asks Ian what he’s excited about in the latest myopia research; Ian learns some wombat facts from Kate (irrelevant to said research), and Ian has a seagull on his roof but Kate can’t hear it. Tune in to learn more on all these topics! 

Meet the Authors:

About Kate Gifford

Dr Kate Gifford is an internationally renowned clinician-scientist optometrist and peer educator, and a Visiting Research Fellow at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. She holds a PhD in contact lens optics in myopia, four professional fellowships, over 100 peer reviewed and professional publications, and has presented more than 200 conference lectures. Kate is the Chair of the Clinical Management Guidelines Committee of the International Myopia Institute. In 2016 Kate co-founded Myopia Profile with Dr Paul Gifford; the world-leading educational platform on childhood myopia management. After 13 years of clinical practice ownership, Kate now works full time on Myopia Profile.