When optometry and medical students are taught at university, a dramatic caveat should be added to much of what they learn: that it will be of no use in their careers to come. Knowledge is constantly replaced or updated, and clinical skills are at risk of being superseded by technology: for example, the time-honoured art of direct ophthalmoscopy may be on the verge of redundancy (Purbrick and Chong 2015). Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the commonest cause of visual impairment in the western world, and is becoming an increasing public health challenge in Asia (Velez-Montoya et al. 2014). The management of AMD underwent a paradigm shift in 2006 with the advent of antivascular endothelial growth factor treatments (anti-VEGFs) and optical coherence tomography (OCT).