Eye2Gene is led by Dr Nikolas Pontikos at UCL, Professor Susan Downes at Oxford and Savita Madhusudhan at Liverpool.
The Department of Health and Social Care awarded £1.3M to phase 2 of the Eye2Gene project as part of its Artificial Intelligence in Health & Care Award. This Award makes £140 million available over four years to accelerate the testing and evaluation of artificial intelligence technologies which meet the aims set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.
The Award aims to increase the impact of AI-driven technologies to help solve clinical and operational challenges across the NHS and care settings. It will speed up the most promising technologies through the regulatory process by building an evidence base to demonstrate the effectiveness and safety of AI-driven technologies in health and social care.
With more than 300 possible genetic causes of inherited retinal disease, requiring differing management or treatment options, swift diagnosis is crucial. The Eye2Gene technology has been developed at UCL and Moorfields, and will be validated at Oxford University Hospital and the other sites.
The clinical safety officer, Dr Mital Shah from Oxford, will be responsible for overseeing the safety and efficacy of Eye2Gene in a retrospective observational evaluation on clinical scans from patients with a confirmed genetic diagnosis that will be collected from the participating sites.
Phase 2 of the project starts on 1 January 2022 and will last for three years, during which Eye2Gene will be developed into a software as a medical device to be used for decision support.