‘Saw a need’: Optimus Eye Care primed to serve Innisfil community
Staff recently held a grand opening for their office in the Rizzardo Health and Wellness Centre
They’re focused on keeping your vision optimal, Innisfil.
Staff at Optimus Eye Care recently held a grand opening for their office in the Rizzardo Health and Wellness Centre.
“We’ve lived in Innisfil for about four years; we saw a need right now for patients that need same-day care and patients that need emergency care,” said Optimus president Shiv Sharma. “If there’s a referral, an emergency, we want to be in a location that’s convenient for somebody to be seen. There is a great demand for immediate services.”
Optimus is largely a family affair. The two optometrists — Dr. Anupma Sharma and Dr. Soumya Sharma — are Shiv’s mom and wife, respectively.
It offers a variety of services, including dry eye treatment, myopia management for children, contact lens fitting and comprehensive eye exams — and staff use artificial intelligence to support disease diagnosis by automating the selection of high-resolution optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans and the detection of more than 70 pathologies and biomarkers.
Several dignitaries attended the grand opening, which included snacks, tours, equipment demonstrations and a ribbon cutting.
“We’ve got a fast-growing community,” Barrie-Innisfil MP John Brassard said. “Anyone who invests in our communities sees immediate return on investment because of the amount of people coming here … and a council who supports them. The job of government is not to stand in front of business, but stand behind them. That means making it easy to open a business.”
Mayor Lynn Dollin agreed.
“That’s the whole point … is to not get in your way too much,” she said. “We spent a long time trying to become a place and not a space. Up until now, everybody expected our 45-, 46-thousand people to go to Barrie or Bradford when they needed services. That’s why we built this space. We’re so happy to fill it with young professionals who are able to provide support closer to home. We’re very happy to have services closer to home. They’re important to us.”
Optimus is dedicated to providing “comprehensive eye exams and medical eye-care solutions for all ages,” Shiv said.
“One of the big focuses we had when we started up the business was making sure we introduced as much digitalization as we could,” he said, adding the technology employed here reduces manual work, allowing for longer interaction with patients. “We want to be able to spend more time between the patient and the doctor than what we would typically see. If we can take a typical 10- to 12-minute interaction and extend that to a 20-minute interaction, the greatest beneficiaries of that are the people who have more complex conditions.”
Optimus is located on the second floor of Rizzardo, which is at 7325 Yonge St. For more information, visit optimuseyecare.ca, email [email protected] or call 705-998-3995.
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