Your thoughts on... the economy

This month's topic: professional expenditure

Key Points

Here at Ophthalmology Times Europe, we were interested to see how you think the seemingly ever-worsening economic climate would impact on professional expenditure this year, and we were surprised by the results of our enquiries.

In answer to the question "How do you think your professional expenditure will change in 2009 compared with 2008?",1 only 32% of survey respondents answered that they were planning to reduce their expenditure (to varying degrees) this year. The most common single response was "I plan to spend about the same" (29%), and the remaining 39% are in fact planning to increase professional expenditure this year to varying degrees.

The polarity of the responses to the question "How much do you plan to spend on new products and equipment this year?"3 was striking. In contrast to earlier results, this survey revealed that ophthalmologists in fact intend to spend either very little or very large sums in 2009: a large proportion of respondents (33%) are expecting to spend over €500,000 on new products and equipment, although slightly more (38%) intend to spend no more than €50,000.

Overall, however, despite the relative caution in terms of money spent on acquiring new products and equipment, it seems that the European ophthalmology market is starting 2009 from a healthy position.

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1. OTE online survey; http://www.oteurope.com/, December 2008.

2. OTE online survey; http://www.oteurope.com/, November 2008.

3. OTE online survey; http://www.oteurope.com/, January 2009. Results correct at the time of going to press.