Well, well. It seems that the first ever International Ophthalmic Conference will be held on board a luxury cruise ship, the Super Star Libra, coasting across the Arabian Sea. While snorkeling and coral watching will definitely be part of the conference schedule, the 380 surgeons aboard the ship will also be deliberating the current practices and future trends regarding eye surgery.

And what does this mean for us laymen? For one, the gathering of experts will be discussing pathbreaking technological advances like artificial eyes. Although there has been some encouraging progress in this field recently, there’s still much to be learnt. After all, patients given such robotic eyes can only see grayscale dots at the moment.

Besides these pathbreaking and generally more “fantastic” technologies, there will also be discussion about the more mundane surgical procedures, such as wavefront-based epi-lasik and multifocal lens implants. We’ve talked about both procedures before, so I’ll skip the details.

So, that’s about it for now. Hopefully, we’ll see substantial progress emerging from this conference. You never know, one genius half drunk could very well discover the secret to artificial eyes while snorkeling.

[News via Daily News and Analysis]