Financing new equipment can be costly, an average practice will have around 10 to 15 optical instruments. Then on top of that, you have furniture, consumables and frame stock. Equipment costs for a basic one test room practice can cost anything between £25,000 - £70,000.
With the advances in technology, cutting-edge equipment is becoming more common-place in high street opticians. This gives enormous diagnostic and monitoring power to the optometrist.
Manual subjective vision testing is being replaced by digital test charts and automated phoropters, and fundus photography has become standard across many practices.