THE STORY OF ROSE K

Already in the 60s Paul Rose, the innovator behind Rose K, started to think about how contact lenses could help people to a better quality of life. Only 21 years old he started his first own contact lens clinic, which by coincidence happened on the very same day as Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and uttered the winged words:

That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind

What Paul Rose didn’t know then was that he would too leave a clear footprint, but in his field of work.

This is his own story!

”When I studied optometry in the 60s, the contact lens field were in its infancy. Rigid, bi-curved corneal lenses were the only ones fitted, but Alan Bott, the optometrist who ran the contact lens clinic at the university, was incredibly innovative and encouraging. In the following years we became close friends and he motivated me to develop a practice entirely focused on contact lenses. 21 years old and 14 months after graduation I started my own practice. It opened on the 20th July 1969 – the same day as the moon landing.

Unusually common diagnosis

The region I was practicing in had a large proportion of Maori population and in this community there was a high incidence of keratoconus. A recent survey in New Zealand shows this figure to be around 1 in 200 as opposed to 1 in 1000 in mixed groups.
I immediately started to see many keratoconus patients but I had very little knowledge of how to fit these patients. Honestly, I had only encountered two such cases before and it was during my first year at university But gradually I built up the knowledge in my clinic. During a 10-year period, we worked with several different keratoconus designs and I became more and more aware of how the designs worked in different stages of the disease.

Time-consuming fitting

In the early 80s, I started to design individual lenses for each case. However, this was very timeconsuming, and I often fitted three or four lenses to get the correct final fit. I wanted to make customisation easier and decided there had to be a better way. With a local lab on board, I started to develop a model and fitting system with a reduced number of variables that most fitters could follow without being experts. This was important for patient access since the population lives spread out over a large area and could have difficulty seeing a specialist.

After 12 different designs I finally found one that I was happy with and it was introduced on New Zealand in 1990

A welcome computer lathe

I struck several obstacles along the way and sometimes I was about to give up. At the time, secondary curves were polished by hand which led to varying results. I wanted to create repeatable lenses, but that was not possible due to the manufacturing methods of that time. However, all this changed in 1989 when the local lab invested in a computer lathe, the first in New Zealand, and I was able to make small changes that were repeatable.

Rose K conquers the world

After 12 different designs, I finally came up with one that I was confident with, and it was introduced to the New Zealand market in 1990. It was quickly recognised by optometrists throughout the country and within a year it had become the most widely used keratoconus design. I was approached by an Australian lab for distribution in Australia, and then a lab in the USA. I formed Rose K International with a close friend and together we received FDA approval for the US market. The design then continued to the UK and Europe and today it is sold in over 90 countries. Never in my wildest dreams, I could have predicted this!”