Insight Health Data Research Hub

02/06/2026

Thank you to the incredible Friends of Moorfields volunteers who make such a positive difference to the experience of patients visiting Moorfields Eye Hospital 👏

20/05/2026

Our colleagues in outback Western Australia are using AI as a clinical tool to stop people going blind from diabetic retinopathy (DR). This is a region where residents may have to travel up to 3,000 km to reach a medical centre. Instead, a mobile AI screening service goes to people in remote areas, helping them to get diagnosed and treated sooner.

Led by Angus Turner with Mark Chia at Australian non-profit organisation Lions Outback Vision, the breakthrough medical AI service was developed in collaboration with First Nations Australians, who are disproportionately affected by DR.

The project was delivered with technology partners Google and Topcon Healthcare, supported by Pearse Keane's lab at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and the INSIGHT Hub at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

Read how the work evolved 🔗https://www.insight.hdrhub.org/post/novel-ai-system-tackles-eye-health-inequalities-in-outback-australia

Watch the video to find out about the project's impact ⬇️ https://youtu.be/h_W9dZjdii0?si=-GuCqdPGeSTfaNFb

Join in Broome, Western Australia, as he meets with eye...

19/05/2026

What can we expect from the next wave of medical AI? Writing for the College of Optometrists, journalist Helen Bird explores how and multiomics could shape the future of eye care.

The feature investigates how linkages between eye data and other biological data such as genomics are advancing the role of ocular biomarkers in unlocking complex biological systems - informed by interviews with oculomics pioneer Pearse Keane and Professor Anthony Khawaja of Moorfields Eye Hospital UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, INSIGHT, Cascader.

Read the article 🔗
https://www.insight.hdrhub.org/post/oculomics-multiomics-and-the-future-of-eye-health

Reproduced with kind permission of the editors of Acuity.

11/05/2026

Next Wednesday 20th May, the National AI Commission is holding an online session to answer questions from the public on the regulation of AI in healthcare ⬇️

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21/04/2026

Researchers at Tohoku University and UCL have developed a more precise AI model for measuring retinal age gap - a biomarker indicating the difference between a person’s biological age and their chronological age.

In addition to training and validating the model on large-scale eye imaging datasets from Japan and the UK, the team added the blood sugar marker HbA1c to the training data, improving the model’s accuracy.

The model was able to predict age from a single fundus image, with accuracy of around 3 years on average, which is an improvement on previous benchmarks. It showed that a larger gap is associated with diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

Because the model works from a single routine eye photograph, with no blood tests required at the point of use, it could be developed for clinical settings to flag people with a large retinal gap, so they can be referred for systemic health checks.

The paper is published in Communications Medicine, and is part of a wider collaboration between Tohoku and UCL.
bit.ly/4mJx7Hm

A picture (of the eye) is worth a thousand words to this AI system that predicts the risk of developing major diseases like diabetes.

14/04/2026

A portable GPU could power research institutions in Rwanda and other Low Middle Income countries (LMICs) with the computing power they need to contribute training datasets to the world’s first globally representative medical AI foundation model, Global RETFound.

The initiative is co-led by UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, Moorfields Eye Hospital, INSIGHT Eye Hub, National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong 香港中文大學 - CUHK.

Bringing together more than 100 research groups to contribute data to the model is a technical challenge. Not all groups have the infrastructure for easy curation of local, anonymised patient datasets.

To find a way forward, our colleague Fiston Gatera recently travelled to Rwanda with a portable GPU, successfully testing it with a team at CIIC-HIN (SEEK-IN), a centre of the Africa Knowledge Institute for Innovation and Scientific Advancement (AKIISA).

The plan is to enable centres in LMICs with no GPU to collaborate on building the Global RETFound foundation model. This will enhance equity as well as capacity building in medical AI in LMICs.

Read more about Global RETFound: https://www.insight.hdrhub.org/post/quest-to-build-the-first-medical-ai-foundation-model-with-globally-representative-data

08/04/2026

We have updated our data catalogue for (DR), among the world's most comprehensive and diverse longitudinal datasets curated for this condition.

DR affects a third of the 4.4 million people estimated to have diabetes in the UK, and is a leading cause of preventable blindness in the adult working population globally.

Through INSIGHT at Moorfields Eye Hospital, DR data is routinely collected from patient appointments, anonymised and curated into information-rich datasets. This data is accessible to researchers working for patient benefit, and is a valuable bio-resource representing the diversity of the population served by Moorfields.

INSIGHT data and advanced infrastructure supports much of the research work undertaken in the medical lab of Pearse Keane across Moorfields and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, in addition to external projects in the wider research ecosystem.

For more information view the recently updated INSIGHT DR data catalogue
🔗 https://lnkd.in/eyf-UHxC

Find out how to apply for access
🔗 https://lnkd.in/eT7QZx8k

25/03/2026

In 2027, we will be moving to the Moorfields and UCL Centre for Eye Health, which has been officially confirmed as the name of the building now nearing completion in Kings Cross.

The new centre will co-locate us with colleagues at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, and within close proximity to many key stakeholders in the life sciences ecosystem.

We are thrilled to share that our new centre for eye care, research, and education will be called Moorfields and UCL Centre for Eye Health!

Located in Camden, the centre will bring together clinicians from Moorfields and researchers from UCL under one roof enabling closer collaboration to speed up the delivery of treatments and therapies for patients.

The centre is a joint initiative between Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology , and Moorfields Eye Charity .

Read more about Moorfields and UCL Centre for Eye Health on our website https://www.moorfields.nhs.uk/about-us/oriel/oriel-news/moorfields-and-ucl-centre-for-eye-health

19/03/2026

Using medical AI on ‘autopilot’ risks deskilling of clinicians, a team of doctors and aviation safety experts has cautioned. Instead, healthcare must embrace AI as a 'digital copilot'.

Writing for Nature Portfolio, the group of clinicians and flight safety specialists has set out five recommendations for the medical profession, informed by lessons from the aviation industry, which faced widespread loss of human skills after the adoption of autopilot.

The advice is co-authored by clinical researchers from Pearse Keane's research group at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, Moorfields Eye Hospital, the INSIGHT Hub, who worked with the flight safety department of Lufthansa on the recommendations for future-proofing the clinical workforce and improving patient outcomes.

Read more:

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into healthcare services, there are important lessons that the medical profession can learn from the aviation industry, which faced widespread loss of human skills after the adoption of autopilot.

16/03/2026

Discover the world-leading artificial medical intelligence work across UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital, supported by funding from Moorfields Eye Charity.

As Pearse Keane and Ariel Ong explain in the video below, development of healthcare AI is a complex process that begins with access to large-scale datasets and algorithm building, and encompasses the vital aspects of clinical evaluation, validation, safety and ensuring that AI algorithms work equally well on many different patient groups.

Pearse is Professor of Artificial Medical Intelligence at UCL, Consultant Ophthalmologist at Moorfields and Director of the INSIGHT Eye & Oculomics Health Data Research Hub. Ariel is a doctoral fellow, jointly funded by Moorfields Eye Charity and National Institute for Health and Care Research, and Data Lead for INSIGHT.