A major milestone for the treatment of eye disease

We are delighted to announce the results of the first phase of our joint research partnership with Moorfields Eye Hospital, which could potentially transform the management of sight-threatening eye disease.The results, published online inNature Medicine(open access full text, see end of blog), show that our AI system can quickly interpret eye scans from routine clinical practice with unprecedented accuracy. It can correctly recommend how patients should be referred for treatment for over 50 sight-threatening eye diseases as accurately as world-leading expert doctors.These are early results, but they show that our system could handle the wide variety of patients found in routine clinical practice. In the long term, we hope this will help doctors quickly prioritise patients who need urgent treatment which could ultimately save sight.A more streamlined processCurrently, eyecare professionals use optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans to help diagnose eye conditions. These 3D images provide a detailed map of the back of the eye, but they are hard to read and need expert analysis to interpret.The time it takes to analyse these scans, combined with the sheer number of scans that healthcare professionals have to go through (over 1,000 a day at Moorfields alone), can lead to lengthy delays between scan and treatment even when someone needs urgent care.