Pearse Keane

About Pearse Keane

“It is impossible for me to talk about any impact I have made in ophthalmology without referring to my research team at Moorfields Eye Hospital and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology. Over the past year I’ve been most excited to see our progress in taking artificial medical intelligence from code to clinic. We have begun to realize real-world impact across three significant areas: translation, health equity, and initiating new data linkages that we think will underpin an emerging era of multi-omic research centred around the eye.

“We had already laid much of the groundwork for AI in ophthalmology, and healthcare more broadly through the field of oculomics. This includes a proof-of-concept algorithm that can detect eye disease with the same accuracy as a human expert, through our collaboration with Google DeepMind.

“More recently, we have brought this technology a step closer to patients by comprehensively refining and validating the algorithm, and co-founding a company, Cascader. Cascader’s initial focus is on macular diseases, but our long-term mission is to develop a portfolio of AI tools, including for detection of systemic conditions.

“A critical part of translating medical AI from research to patient care is health equity. We have identified a huge opportunity for AI to tackle gaps in global health equity by bringing world-leading expertise from centers like Moorfields and UCL to places where there is limited or no access to medical care. This has inspired one of our most ambitious projects, the Global RETFound initiative, which brings together over 100 study groups in more than 65 countries to develop an AI model using an unprecedented dataset of over 100 million colour fundus photographs. We are evaluating the model across multiple ophthalmic and systemic diseases, and will make it freely available for non-commercial research worldwide.

Working with my colleague Siegfried Wagner and the INSIGHT Health Data Research Hub at Moorfields, we have begun a new phase of oculomics research that encompasses linked genetic data from the NIHR BioResource and UK Biobank. We are also exploring linkages with other medical imaging data beyond ophthalmology. We think the combined approach holds the potential for a transformative impact on healthcare.”