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Eye2Gene wins Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award

Eye2Gene is a web tool devised by University College London Moorfields Ophthalmic Reading Centre for genetic prediction of inherited retinal disease using machine learning.

Mid June 2021 the Department of Health and Social Care announced the 38 winners of round two of the Artificial Intelligence in Health & Care Award, which include the Eye2Gene platform. 

The AI Award is making £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. This is one of the NHS AI Lab programmes, led by NHSX. The competitive award scheme is run by the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) in partnership with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). 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.

Eye2Gene explores the use of AI to determine which genetic condition is causing a patient’s inherited retinal disease, by examining eye scans. With more than 300 possible genetic causes, requiring differing management or treatment options, swift diagnosis is crucial.

The Moorfields reading centre is part of the partnership between Moorfields Eye Hospital and the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology. It was established to provide high quality, standardised, unbiased image grading for clinical trials and other research projects in ophthalmology.


Moorfields Ophthalmic Reading Centre

At the Moorfields reading centre we aim to harness the potential of big data and artificial intelligence to offer novel solutions for image grading and provide added value alongside high quality image grading for clinical trials. More information under https://readingcentre.org/

Eye2Gene website

Eye2Gene is an app that will help clinicians provide a genetic diagnosis for people with progressive sight-loss caused by an inherited retinal dystrophy (IRD). Over 180 gene mutations are known to cause IRD and a genetic diagnosis is a significant step towards managing, and possibly treating, people's sight-loss. Eye2Gene will make genetic diagnosis faster and accessible to more IRD-affected families. Eye2Gene will be trained using the data of thousands of patients so that it can learn to distinguish between the different genetic causes. In the first stage of development, Eye2Gene will be trained using auto-fluorescent images of retinas. You will be able to upload a retina image and Eye2Gene will report which genes are most likely to be causing the IRD. More information under https://eye2gene.com/about

Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award

More information under https://www.england.nhs.uk/aac/what-we-do/how-can-the-aac-help-me/ai-award/