What Is The Best Eye Banking System? A Comparison
Between Australia, United Kingdom And United States of America.

Alice Downie

The Eye Hospital, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia.

The purpose of this study is to compare eye banks internationally across the United Kingdom, United States of America and Australia and find the best eye banking system. Taking the best practices from each eye bank I hope to extrapolate this and help to establish an eye banking system for Tasmania. The Tasmanian system could either collect and store locally or collect and store in the already established Victorian Eye Bank. I will be comparing the UK system to the USA system when I travel overseas and visit them in November and December 2010, as part of my Winston Churchill Fellowship. The UK system works on a centralised system collecting tissue around the country and storing in central eye banks mainly in Manchester, Bristol and London. The USA has a lot more eye banks and has the ability to collect and store locally. As well as visiting the UK and USA I plan on visiting all the Australian eye banks so that I can adopt a model that would fit into the already established eye banking system of Australia.