Insight Health Data Research Hub

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.

12/03/2026

Glaucoma is one of the leading causes of irreversible blindness worldwide, and detecting it in short-sighted (myopic) patients can be significantly more difficult.

As rates of both glaucoma and myopia rise, their combined influence on clinical services and patient outcomes remains an underexplored area of research - now being tackled by clinical optometrist and PhD researcher Caitlin Campbell.

Using large-scale anonymised health data through the INSIGHT Eye Hub at Moorfields Eye Hospital, Caitlin is investigating how myopia currently impacts glaucoma care, and how new clinical tests under development may be used to address the problem.

After completing her clinical training, including a pre-registration year at Moorfields, Caitlin began her PhD research into glaucoma and myopia at Ulster University, working in collaboration with researchers at Moorfields, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Cardiff University, under the supervision of Pádraig Mulholland.

Find out more about Caitlin’s research using anonymised NHS health data. https://www.insight.hdrhub.org/post/researchers-use-health-data-to-tackle-a-growing-challenge-in-glaucoma-care

26/02/2026

The first fundus photographs of the human eye were reproduced 140 years ago by William Thomas Jackman and JD Webster in an 1886 London edition of "The Photographic News". The images were subsequently published in international journals of the day, along with the technique, which entailed an exposure time of 2 minutes, 30 seconds.

Since then, Colour Fundus Photographs (CFPs) have become the dominant eye imaging modality for assessing retinal conditions, especially diabetic retinopathy. Images are typically captured in a fraction of a second.

At Moorfields Eye Hospital, around 50,000 images each month are added to INSIGHT's data repository and made ready for medical research. As our data visualisation shows, a significant proportion of these are CFPs, alongside Optical Coherence Tomography (OCTs), Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscopy (SLO), Fluorescein Angiography (FA), and Fundus Autofluorescence (AF). Together they comprise the world's largest resource of ophthalmic imaging linked to medical records.

Find out more about the imaging modalities represented in the INSIGHT data resource and the conditions they cover: https://lnkd.in/e7X5KQcK

Historical image courtesy Internet Archive

10/02/2026

In the latest edition of Acuity, the professional development journal of the College of Optometrists, journalist Helen Bird explores how AI is transforming eye care by supporting earlier disease detection, clearer tracking and more accurate referrals.

The feature is part of a series on and draws on expertise shared by Pearse Keane and Anthony Khawaja of UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital.

Reproduced with kind permission of Acuity's editors.

Decoding Disease: the latest edition of Acuity, the journal of the College of Optometrists, explores how AI is transforming eye care by supporting earlier disease detection, clearer tracking and more accurate referrals.

08/02/2026

For the latest episode of Mork Unfiltered, Patrick Mork invites Pearse Keane to share how he built a career in and helped to forge the field of artificial medical intelligence, driven by the need to prevent people from going blind.

Together they cover:
• The "Sliding Doors" Moment: How a LinkedIn message to Google DeepMind influenced the course of medical history.

• The Power of : Why the eye is a "window to the rest of the body" and can predict the risk of a heart attack.

• Forged in the Trenches: Surviving the "Special Forces" training of a surgical internship and what it teaches you about human capacity.

• & Open Source: The decision to share the world's first AI foundation model for eye health with the public to accelerate patient benefit at scale.

• Defining "Artificial Medical Intelligence": Why we need a new kind of leadership to figure out what AGI looks like when applied to healthcare.

Pearse is professor of artificial medical intelligence at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital and director of INSIGHT Eye Hub.

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/ppuGE7_Nzp8

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0qUNxAFZPeeYzV2PxLbfGQ?si=d5ca0b4c2dfc4b38

Listen on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-a-single-eye-scan-could-save-your-life/id1824866742?i=1000748382075

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👉 Download Mork’s Guide to Resilience: https://aa5c-ea.systeme.io/resilience🌟 Hire Patrick to speak about Purpose, Resilience, and Leadership: https://patr...

02/02/2026

Healthcare AI improves diagnostics and patient outcomes in places where resources are limited, finds new three new studies led by Duke-NUS Medical School with collaborating researchers including colleagues at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology Moorfields Eye Hospital and INSIGHT Eye Hub.

Click below for the full story ⬇️

Did you know that AI tools can guide doctors in making critical decisions and improve healthcare access, especially in resource-limited settings?

In one example, Assoc Prof Liu Nan and his team, along with their collaborators, demonstrated that existing AI models for predicting patient outcomes after cardiac arrest could be adapted for data-scarce regions via transfer learning. By removing the need to train models from scratch, this technique reduces costs and development time for introducing healthcare AI to new environments.

The team also called for the formation of an international consortium to help healthcare systems around the world leverage AI’s strengths safely and responsibly.

Read more about it from the link in the comments.

28/01/2026

Data Protection Day, marked annually on 28th January, commemorates the Council of Europe’s Convention 108, introduced in 1981 as the first legally binding treaty protecting privacy in the digital age.

45 years on, the day is marked globally to raise awareness of how personal data is collected, stored and used. In the context of healthcare data, this may be more important than ever, with the rise in wearables, remote monitoring tools and digital health apps accelerating the amount of personal health data being collected.

As the world’s largest resource of eye imaging data linked to clinical records, collected through routine appointments at Moorfields Eye Hospital, INSIGHT meets comprehensive governance and ethical standards for enabling and supporting research and innovation into eye health and systemic health.

"Data protection isn't a barrier to medical progress – it's the foundation that makes progress possible," says INSIGHT Director Pearse Keane. "Without public trust, built on transparent and rigorous safeguards, research simply cannot happen."

Click on the image below to read more about data protection at INSIGHT, and how patients play a central role.

INSIGHT enables research across Moorfields, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and the wider healthcare and medical ecosystem. Clinical researchers and data scientists working with us are supported by NIHR Moorfields Biomedical Research Centre, Moorfields Eye Charity Friends of Moorfields

Marked annually on 28th January, Data Protection Day is a timely opportunity to highlight how INSIGHT at Moorfields safeguards data, while enabling world-leading medical research.

19/01/2026

In conversation with The Ophthalmologist, our colleagues Pearse Keane and Jeffry Hogg from Moorfields Eye Hospital discuss the role of in improving the management of patients with Age-related Macular Degeneration

AI isn’t here to replace ophthalmologists - it’s here to strengthen clinical decision-making.

We spoke with Jeffry Hogg and Pearse Keane (Moorfields Eye Hospital, London) about how AI-enabled OCT analysis could help close treatment gaps in neovascular AMD, reducing both under- and overtreatment in real-world care.

“When ophthalmologists work together with AI, they rank the correct diagnosis higher and enrich their management plans.”

🔗 Read the full interview: https://ow.ly/t69H50XTrfE