• SERI-ARVO meeting
• ophthalmic research
• Asia

The progress of ophthalmology in Asia has paralleled much of its socioeconomic evolution. During the early years of a nation‘s development, scarce resources of a country were usually concentrated on building the basic healthcare infrastructure and services needed to cater for the general population. Over time, with increasing affluence and improved health care, resources could be channelled elsewhere towards developing other goals. One such development is the emergence of ophthalmic research in Asia. As in Western societies, clinical and basic science research is increasingly seen as being an integral component of a well balanced portfolio in many Asian healthcare institutions. This is reflected by the increasing number of high quality publications in leading eye journals that originate from Asia.

Although there are several clinical meetings in ophthalmology held on a regular basis in Asia, there are few large forums in this region that bring together vision and ophthalmic scientists to share their work. It was with this in mind that the Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI), in direct collaboration with the Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) in the United States, organised the SERI-ARVO Meeting in Singapore in February 2003. The meeting covered both clinical research in ophthalmology and basic research in the visual sciences, with specific emphasis on eye diseases relevant to Asians. Several …