SYRACUSE — It’s so rare for Eye Consultants of Syracuse to come across trained, experienced ophthalmic assistants that when it does, the practice will sometimes hire the person even if it doesn’t have an opening.

“We look all the time,” says Heather Whitt, a certified ophthalmic medical technologist at Eye Consultants. “There is just nothing as far as training in this field.”

Whitt is hoping a new training program launching this fall at Onondaga Community College (OCC) will help her practice and others fill a major need for ophthalmic assistants.

Ophthalmic assistants often either educate themselves through books or through on-the-job training programs at practices like Eye Consultants. Whitt says she spent seven years attaining her current certification, which is a few steps beyond what an entry-level assistant would work toward.

“I did it myself,” she says. “It was not easy.”

The closest formal training programs for assistants, she adds, are in New Jersey and Vermont.

Eye Consultants approached OCC with the idea for the program after an internal brainstorming session, Whitt says. They solicited letters from eye-care professionals around the state to demonstrate the need for the program.

They received thousands of messages supporting the idea.

It was one of the strongest responses to a potential program the school has ever seen, says David Wall, director of corporate and public partnerships at OCC.

“It’s so unusual to have an industry come in like this,” he says. “This is exciting stuff. This is the way it should work.”

Ophthalmic assistants assist eye-care practitioners in retail optical dispensaries, medical offices, and hospital settings. They are trained to perform numerous diagnostic tests and can perform a variety of other tasks like contact lens instruction or assisting during eye surgery.

The training will begin this fall at OCC as a non-credit program, Wall says. The long-term goal is to develop a full degree or certificate program around the training.

The process to develop the full program should take a year or two.

There are simply not enough ophthalmic assistants in the marketplace, Whitt says. That’s one reason the program at OCC could draw students from around the state, she adds.

For practices like Eye Consultants, training new assistants is a major expense in resources and time. Whitt says it can take months before a new assistant is up to par.

The work itself is challenging, she adds. Ophthalmic assistants are often expected to anticipate a doctor’s needs and order certain tests without specific instructions.

That way, when ophthalmologists sit down with patients, they already have all the information they need, Whitt says.

Ophthalmic assistants are certified by an international body, the Joint Commission on Allied Health Personnel in Ophthalmology. The OCC program will prepare students to pass the group’s initial exams.

The commission offers seven different certifications. Entry-level assistants can earn $13 to $15 an hour.

OCC’s Wall says he expects the initial non-credit program to launch with 15 to 20 students. The school must keep the class sizes reasonable since lab work will be a key part of the program.

The goal is to make sure students get plenty of practice with the instruments and equipment they’ll be using in eye-care practices, Wall says.

OCC is still finalizing a few of the program’s courses. The college plans to launch enrollment and marketing for the program soon, Wall says.

Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com

SYRACUSE — The School of Information Studies (iSchool) at Syracuse University will serve as one of 50 sites around the world for the second International Space Apps Challenge, sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The hackathon-style event will take place at the iSchool April 20 and 21. NASA will release 50 specific challenges it hopes to address through the events in the coming weeks.

Teams will come together at events around the world to develop applications to solve those problems, says Chelsea Orcutt, an organizer of the iSchool event. The challenges will be grouped in four categories including hardware, software, data visualization, and citizen science.

The iSchool event is open to anyone in the Syracuse community. Orcutt says she expects strong participation from the iSchool and across the Syracuse University campus.

Organizers are hoping for about 75 people. Participants don’t need to organize themselves into teams ahead of time.

Projects produced through the events are judged at the local level, Orcutt says. The most promising among them go on to NASA, which chooses the ultimate winners.

The iSchool is hosting the event for the first time, but NASA began the challenge in 2012. It focuses on addressing challenges related to both space exploration and social need, according to the iSchool.

The 2012 event brought participants together at more than 25 locations around the world and at the International Space Station.

The local event could be a starting point for solving NASA problems, but Orcutt says she wouldn’t be surprised if some teams produced more advanced technology over the course of the two days.

“We do have quite a bit of talent in Syracuse,” she says. “So I imagine people will be coming up with something more complex.”

NASA and the iSchool have been partnering on various projects in recent years, Orcutt adds. The agency has participated in some coursework at the school and the iSchool has been involved in NASA’s open government initiative.

Hosting the challenge is a continuation of that partnership, Orcutt says.

“We want to be able to give real world experience to our students,” she says. “Not just iSchool students. It could be any Syracuse student.”

Working on a project directly related to a challenge presented by NASA will naturally look good on students’ resumes, she notes.

Orcutt says more information will be posted about the challenge in the coming weeks on the iSchool website at http://ischool.syr.edu. The event also has a Twitter feed, which can be found @SpaceAppsSU.

Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com

SALINA  —  A few years ago, Dr. Thomas Bersani spotted a trend beginning that would sweep up his practice. And he’s not blinking on a prediction that the trend will continue in the future.

“For the last four or five years, I’ve gotten extremely busy,” says Bersani, who is a member of the American Society of Ophthalmic Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery. “As the population ages, we just get busier. I see the future of this area of the country as needing more people in our field.”

Bersani’s field, oculoplastic surgery, is surgery on the eyelids, tear ducts, orbits, and upper facial area. It focuses on problems caused by genetics or cosmetic issues.

It works to fix problems including droopy eyelids that block vision, sagging lower eyelids affecting the eye’s ability to close, and turned-in lids that rub the eye. Other issues addressed include skin cancers near the eye, facial nerve palsies, problems with artificial eyes, blocked tear ducts, orbital trauma fractures, lacerations, tumors, and bulging or wide-open eyes.

“A lot of the problems we deal with are too close to the eye and involve the function of the eye to involve a plastic or ENT surgeon,” Bersani says. “But they’re too far away from the eye for an ophthalmologist, who is working right on the eye.”

Working in that facial Goldilocks zone is attracting more and more patients. So Bersani moved his practice, Eye Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeons of CNY, P.C., into a building that he thinks is just right for growth.

That move took place in February 2012. Eye Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeons relocated into 5,500 square feet of clinical space at 3400 Vickery Road in Salina.

It’s a building that Bersani purchased for $950,000 in April 2011, according to records from Onondaga County’s Office of Real Property Tax Services. Pyramid Brokerage Co. was the broker in the sale.

The building had been an automobile-repair shop — a Sears Service Center — that Bersani had transformed into a facility capable of holding medical offices. R.F. Esposito, Inc. of DeWitt performed renovations.

But Bersani didn’t stop there. He converted another 5,500 square feet of space in the building into a surgery center. That center opened about six months ago.

In all, renovating the building cost about $2 million, Bersani estimates. Alliance Bank provided financing for the work and for purchasing the facility. Another 9,000 square feet of the building stands vacant and ready to be leased by another tenant.

Opening the surgery center took a while because Eye Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeons applied to have it become Medicaid approved. That means it meets safety requirements including having backup electrical systems and a backup life-support system to function in case of a power failure, Bersani says.

Bersani hired nine employees to work in the surgery center. The practice also has six workers in its clinical office. It’s a far cry from its original office, a 2,500-square-foot space at 1810 Erie Boulevard in Syracuse that had three employees, besides Bersani.

Patients appreciate the new office’s location, Bersani adds. It can be accessed from Interstate 81 and the New York State Thruway, which he says is important because 60 percent of the practice’s patients come from outside of Onondaga County. The practice draws patients from as far north as Canada down to northern Pennsylvania and from Waterloo to Herkimer County.

“They love the location, they love the space,” Bersani says.

When the surgery center opened six months ago, Bersani added a partner, Dr. Robert Hill, to his practice. And another partner is on the way — Dr. Bryant Carruth will be joining within six months.

The practice hosts about 4,000 patient visits a year. And it performs roughly 2,000 operations a year. Those numbers are set to grow when its new partner joins, Bersani says. He estimates patient volume could grow by 25 percent. The practice will also have to add more staff members, but Bersani doesn’t know how many yet.

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com